Here Be Dragons
by FaerieLight
Summary: Fanfic of Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine. Shikako x Sasuke — need I say more?
1. Chapter 1

**Edit 9/10/19: Stunning new cover art by Kmichie! Check out her work on tumblr - kmichiedreams!**

This is a fanfic of a fanfic, written in the incredible world of Silver Queen's _Dreaming of Sunshine._

A few notes you might want to read first:

1\. I wrote the first 10,000 words or so about a year ago. Although I've now caught up with the most recent chapter (151), the story — sans the prologue, which I posted to the DOS forum ages ago — starts during the Police Arc and deviates from DOS there.

2\. I tried to pin down Shikako's current age as of Chapter 143 but couldn't be much more confident than "probably 14 plus a month or two." Naruto leaves on his thirteenth birthday right before the Grass Chunin Exams, and I think the Hidden Mist Exams take place a year later. Hence it's probably October or November and Shikako's 14.

3\. "Here be dragons" means uncharted territory, basically, and great potential for danger. I couldn't think of anything shadow-related or anything remotely clever for the title, so this is what you get.

4\. Sticking strictly with canon, we know that Shikako is very disinterested in romance and that it's not "like [she] ever planned to have kids" (Chapter 99). That's the foundation I'm working with.

5\. I'll post weekly updates for as long as possible, which I suspect is about five chapters' worth, considering work and some traveling I've got coming up. Beyond that, I'll keep you posted. Even if I never manage to finish this—because it gets longer every time I think about it—I can at least promise you some fluff and drama.

**Warning**: Potential spoilers up to chapter 151 (prologue+150) of _Dreaming of Sunshine_ and spoilers from a picture on Silver Queen's DeviantArt account.

**Rated T **for occasional bad language. The slow, slow-burn romance is PG.

**Disclaimer:** Shikako Nara belongs to Silver Queen.

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Prologue: Mid-chapter 142 - Hidden Mist Arc

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Our group journeyed from Hidden Mist to Konoha with haste, but our speed with three newly-minted chunin was considerably slower than what Sasuke, Tsunade, and I had clocked. As I leaped from branch to branch behind Sasuke, I mentally tacked on an extra day of travel time. And mentally groaned. I was already bored.

The recent encounter with Isobu gave me too much to think about—too many questions with no easy answers, too many problems with no solutions, quandaries that were nothing more than an exercise in frustration. Out here in no-man's land, there wasn't much to distract myself with.

And yet. There was an opportunity now, with the appearance of a certain pair of Mangekyo Sharingan eyes. A possible link.

My thoughts were interrupted when Anko signaled to stop for the night. I heard Yakumo and Sakura sigh in relief and, along with Isaribi, set about making camp. I retrieved my sleeping bag from hammerspace, tossed it on the ground, and…that was it. Sloughing off all the work onto Anko's team so that I had nothing to do was great, except, y'know, I had nothing to do. Just like the past two nights, I decided to do a sweep of our perimeter. It was really just an excuse for a stroll in the forest, while I tried—again—to find a reasonable argument to tie Isobu's enslavement to the genjutsu into my work gathering intel on Akatsuki.

I could hardly come out and scream _Madara!_ but it did give me a reason to ask funny questions and maybe make significant leaps in logic under the right circumstances. It was too much to hope the Uchiha would have kept a record of the particulars of Madara's Mangekyo, wasn't it? Still, Madara would be on any short list of those capable of activating the Mangekyo.

" —really amazing against the bijuu, Sasuke-kun."

I stopped abruptly. I had wandered to the edge of a clearing. Sakura and Sasuke stood across from each other, close to a stream. Sasuke had a pail in hand. Sakura's arms were filled with wood for the fire.

More importantly, there was a sweetness to Sakura's voice that was rather indicative of her intentions, and here I was barging in at exactly the wrong time. Sakura hadn't noticed me yet, but there was no way Sasuke hadn't.

"Thank you, Sakura-san," he said distantly, but he was already turning towards me even as I was backing away. "There you are, Shikako. Help me with this obscene amount of water. I'm pretty sure Anko's pranking me."

It was a blatant attempt to disrupt a confession. I tried not to wince upon seeing Sakura's crestfallen expression.

"I think it'll take a water scroll," Sasuke added.

I cleared my throat, terribly uncomfortable. "How much does Anko want?"

"Enough to fill three bathtubs," he replied dryly. "What she intends to do with it is beyond me. You should head back, Sakura-san. They'll be waiting for the firewood."

Sakura bit her lower lip. I could see her hesitance, her wish for an excuse to stay behind. When she couldn't come up with one, she nodded to us both and scurried off. Then I crossed the clearing and punched Sasuke's arm. None too gently. I didn't like being inserted between two of my best friends.

"That was mean," I said.

Sasuke rubbed his arm and looked unrepentant. "Sakura set up her bedroll right next to mine. She deliberately waited until I'd laid mine out."

I winced. "You could have at least answered her properly."

"And what good would that do?" he said.

"She's brave," I said.

He gave me a deadpan expression. I wished Sasuke wouldn't dismiss her so curtly, not when she was kind and smart and loyal and strong, already on her way to being a total kickass—

"You didn't offer to take the firewood for her," Sasuke said.

I blinked. Um, no? The thought hadn't crossed my mind. Seeing that, Sasuke smirked.

"If you wanted to help her," he added, "you'd have taken the firewood. You're on my side."

"I'm not on anyone's side," I objected. "Sakura is allowed to have feelings, and you are allowed to reject them. I'm not sticking my nose into that."

"You already have," he pointed out.

I scowled at him, which—annoyingly enough—made Sasuke smile. Giving it up for lost, I turned back to the problem I could fix: the acquisition of a ridiculous amount of water. But Sasuke surprised me.

"I won't pursue any kind of attachment," he said carefully. "Not until I've...settled things."

There was a pointedness to the remark. An expectation. And now he was waiting. For a response?

"Ah," I said. "I'll, um, pass the message along?" Though I could hardly see how it would be helpful. In a romantically-inclined mind, it could be misconstrued as a promise: _Wait for me. Wait until I'm free._ Or some such thing. I could see Sakura melting into a puddle of goo upon receiving a declaration like that.

"No," said Sasuke flatly, "there's nothing to _pass along_. I'm telling you—just because."

I drew my brows and stared at him. I could well and truly say he had surprised me. We were suddenly having a legitimate discussion about his future love life. Which _he_ initiated. What was he thinking, opening up to me about this?

Though I was sympathetic, I really had no idea what he wanted from me. Hence, my clever, "All right, then."

He crossed his arms, unimpressed. We stared at each other for a moment. I wanted to be a good friend and hear him out, but by this point, I was sure I'd missed a signal or something—or maybe I was just instinctively supposed to _know_ what to tell him. Why he would think that was beyond me. I wasn't Ino.

But I tried again. "Um, settling things, you said? So you don't want her to get caught up in your personal troubles. That's probably smart."

When he only stood there, dark eyes watchful, I began to feel distinctly flustered. "I guess you're worried about putting a target on some girl's back? That's thoughtful, but you know, as fast as you improve, you'll be strong enough to protect her."

Now he just looked amused.

"Or him," I added. Because really? There I was, trying to encourage him, and he was messing with me. Rude.

His lips quirked upwards. His confidence was really irking me.

"You're completely clueless," he said, and his tone all exasperation and fondness.

That was when he well and truly lost me.

"Three bathtubs' worth of water?" I said quickly, whipping out some paper and ink and running through some calculations.

Sasuke sidled closer. I cast a wary glance at him.

"No, actually," he said. "Anko sent me out for water. She didn't specify an amount."

I tapped my chin. "It could be rather funny, though. I could make it a proper geyser and pass the whole thing off as a learning experience. 'Don't open storage scrolls from strange shinobi' kind of thing."

Sasuke smiled. Then he stepped forward.

It took real effort on my part to maintain my place. Oh, I was quite accustomed to sharing personal space with Sasuke and Naruto and, hell, even Kakashi-sensei and Kiba. I regularly bumped shoulders with them and leaned on them, but that was brought on by playfulness or a need for comfort.

This was…

I didn't know _what_ this was.

I had lost control of the situation, and he wasn't giving me a chance to rectify that. That's why he chose the very speed he did: slowly enough that I could quell any defensive reflexes that might get triggered, quickly enough that I had no time for anything else.

Then he was standing right in front of me, mere inches between us. I could feel my cheeks growing warm—my natural response to any and all forms of embarrassment.

His eyes had lightened. "This is not a confession."

I snorted. I already knew that. I just didn't know what it _was_.

Then he kissed my cheek.

It was gentle. Were I not so very flustered and so very, very taken aback, I might have even thought it was sweet.

Sasuke drew back and studied me. "So," he said, "the water scroll?"

He bent to retrieve the ink brush I'd dropped, and in that moment before his face turned away, all I could notice was how very pleased he was with himself.

And—just..._what?_

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Chapter One

(Four months later)

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Hawk-taicho's Chidori _screamed_ as it ripped through the night, on a collision course with Orochimaru's chest. Nearby, I panted, having forced shadows into existence in this, the dark of night, to bind Orochimaru for the split second necessary. Then Hawk carved through flesh and bone. Blood erupted from Orochimaru's mouth and dripped down Hawk's mask. The Sannin's body slumped.

I didn't even feel relief. Not for a second.

"That's just one body. He's coming back," I said, sensing his vile chakra all over the forest. It intertwined with that of his snakes. Fear sat heavily in my gut. Where we were in Land of Rivers we had no nearby refuge and certainly had no backup. The ambush came with no warning, no time to plan—and after a brief skirmish during the mission itself, when we were already tired.

He was toying with us, with Sasuke, to draw out his potential. There was no mistaking his ultimate intent, though: to take Sasuke, to use him, to turn him into a thing I wouldn't recognize.

At a signal from Hawk, we flickered towards where Towa and Komachi were fighting Kabuto and Manda.

"How's your chakra?" Hawk asked lowly.

"Cut by half."

We leaped apart when a snake burst from the ground between us.

"Better, Sasuke-kun," said a familiar voice, and Orochimaru slithered out from the mouth of his snake summon. "Refreshing, truly. The Uchiha had grown so very stale. Itachi did you a favor in stripping you of their taint."

Then Orochimaru pulled a sword from his mouth and met Hawk's furious onslaught. I sent earth jutsus to trip up Orochimaru, but he glided around them with admirable and infuriating grace.

"Though you still rely on teammates to cover your weaknesses," Orochimaru chided. "In the end, they will always disappoint you."

"You would know," Hawk snarled, "having turned traitor to yours."

Orochimaru's neck had stretched out and now struck like a snake. Hawk's chakra surged, and his arms were suddenly wreathed in flames. Orochimaru retracted his neck and licked his lips.

"You chose your friends, not your vengeance," said Orochimaru. "There's the tragedy, when Konoha itself is the culprit of your family's demise."

"Would you—shut—up!" Hawk growled, and incredible heat radiated from his body.

But I went cold, like I'd been plunged into arctic waters.

If there was anyone who would suspect Itachi's association with Danzo, it was surely Orochimaru. He was changing his tactics. Going from "you're too weak to kill Itachi" to "what do you really know about your village?" Throw Sasuke off track, throw shade at Konoha.

"You could be immortal, Sasuke-kun," said Orochimaru, and then for once broke eye contact with Hawk to look past him. "But weakness is contagious."

I turned. Komachi was crawling away from Manda. The giant snake had coiled, was poised to strike. Its fangs gleamed in the light of Sasuke's fire.

My hands were already moving.

_Replacement!_

I appeared in the gaping maw of the king of snakes.

A long, sharp fang that I couldn't avoid scraped down the side of my leg, tearing through clothes then flesh. I almost blacked out with pain, but the chakra I quickly pulled through the Gelel stone negated the worst of the pain and poison, though an echo of their effects rang through my chakra.

More importantly, my lightsaber had cut through Manda's mouth and punched through his skull. And still the snake flailed. I pumped out more chakra, almost the last of it, and the Raijin no Ken sent kilojoules of electric energy directly into his brain. A horrific screeching noise reverberated in my head. My body vibrated with it.

When Manda finally fell, he took me with him.

The overwhelming aroma of crispy fried snake did not sit well with me, trapped as I was, stuck half in and half out of Manda's jaws. I needed a soldier pill. I needed chakra to power the Gelel stone again. I needed the soldier pill to generate chakra. I needed the stone to get me free of the snake's mouth. My thoughts raced in circles. Dazed, I tried to squirm out from Manda's mouth. Towa popped out of the ground, bleeding freely from a wound in his side, but he still managed to pry me free and throw us both underground before Kabuto could land a hit.

Back to my senses, I split from Towa and reemerged near Sasuke and Komachi, whose femoral artery and no doubt a few muscle groups had fallen victim to chakra scalpels. She'd wrapped the wound and applied pressure, but her leg was coated with blood. Her face was pale with pain and blood loss.

Around us, the trees were on fire, burning from the tops down. A breeze kept the fire breathing. I wondered if I should worry about that. It was nice, though, to have some proper shadows to work with.

Towa flickered over to us as Kabuto gave up trying to revive Manda. Orochimaru was surveying the corpse of his snake summon. His clothes bore burn marks. His neck and hands were blackened with soot. I could see his chest moving with deep breaths, hardly gasping for air, but he was winded. There was something less arrogant about his posture.

His face was absolutely expressionless.

"Any brilliant plans?" Towa muttered to Hawk.

"Can you support Komachi?" At Towa's reluctant nod, Hawk said, "Get out of here. We'll buy you time."

Komachi argued, "Forgive me, taicho, but _hell_ no—"

"We have an escape route," I interrupted, thinking of Shadow State. If I could take all four of us, but no—when it was just me and Sasuke—my chakra and _other_—the shadows were easy enough to separate and let resolve into our physical selves. With three or four, when I was already tired, with my concentration shaken by fear…it wasn't worth the risk, not until it became a last resort.

"There's no time," Hawk barked. "Go."

Towa pulled Komachi over his shoulder and flickered away. Orochimaru didn't bat an eye at their departure.

"The frailty of a mortal body," Orochimaru mused at the side of his dead summon. "How fortunate I've overcome that inconvenience."

"Oh, I dunno," I said glibly. "You're looking rather worse for the wear."

Orochimaru was still powerful, so very powerful, but smart money said he struck _now_ to prevent Sasuke from becoming a true threat in the future, when Orochimaru was at his weakest and in need of a new body.

"Shikako Nara," he said, and I winced behind my mask because, yeah, my lightsaber was a bit of a giveaway. "You have become a particular nuisance."

Hawk shifted and _sharpened _somehow_. _"_I_ get to kill him."

"Yeah, fine. Dibs on Kabuto," I said under my breath. There was so much pain we could avoid if we could just kill that silver-haired sneak, and frankly, I stood exactly zero chance of taking Orochimaru on my own. Kabuto, though…maybe.

I bit down on a soldier pill.

No one said "go," but we all rocketed into motion as one. I shot forward, an apparently straight out charge, before initiating Earth Walking jutsu and dissolving into shadows once I was out of sight.

I doubt Kabuto was surprised when Shadow Stitching tendrils looped around his ankles and wrists while others tried to punch through his chest, but he broke through the paralysis easily, cut through the binding tendrils with his scalpels—used that technique with his hands _and_ _feet_, in fact—and dodged all but one of my attempts to turn him into a pincushion.

I retreated and eyed him warily. I'd definitely put a hole in his abdomen, and he was already healed. Stupid ninja tricks. Correction: Stupid _medic_ ninja tricks. I'd felt his chakra coat the very point the tendril had targeted—_before_ my attack had made contact. Rude.

I risked a glance towards Sasuke and Orochimaru, who seemed to be engaged in a genjutsu battle.

"Are you wondering how I resisted the Nara paralysis technique?" Kabuto asked in a polite tone, as though we were enjoying afternoon tea.

Not really, I didn't say. With his profound knowledge of the human body, I imagined he'd scrambled his own neurons' electric signals, thereby breaking the sympathetic connection. He couldn't turn the technique back on me, at least.

Kabuto's chakra spiked. Then he disappeared. Actually disappeared. To both my eyes and my chakra sensing. My stealth abilities let me match him. It became a high stakes game of hide and seek, but it was one I thought he could win, given his larger chakra reserves.

Fine, area of effect it was. With another thought, no fewer than twelve Touch Blasts went off, and at least one of the explosions struck him hard enough to break his concentration.

"Yin Release: Vestibular Disruption," I murmured, forming the hand seals.

He recovered from the genjutsu quickly. It still bought me enough time to palm a kunai and cross the space between us.

His Suiton: Water Scorpion made me abandon taijutsu and shift to shadow. He took full advantage of my switch from offense to defense. Kabuto was _fast_. He'd have to be to have escaped Gai in the invasion. I tossed a soldier pill in my mouth and bit down, my second. It officially marked the countdown; I couldn't keep up this pace much longer.

Fortunately I had a few low-chakra cost tools up my sleeve.

"Barrier Seal!"

Kabuto's chakra scalpels slice through the barrier, but he rebounded awkwardly. And that—

That was an opening.

The depth of my killing intent surprised even me.

"Ten Thousand Fists!"

If he couldn't determine the point of the incoming strike, he couldn't utilize his rapid healing technique. Or so went my logic. A few hundred kunai shot towards various vital points while the real kunai arced towards his carotid artery.

And suddenly, the whole battle changed. Because I was close, so close to landing a fatal hit. Because Kabuto was valuable. Because Orochimaru was pissed.

I felt it coming. Orochimaru's chakra was spiked with a nigh lethal dose of killing intent. The combination was like a tsunami, first sucking the vitality from my body like waters from a beach, then thundering into me with the full force of the wave.

A giant snake erupted from the ground at my feet. I didn't spare it much thought. I'd committed myself to ending Kabuto. There was so much pain, so much needless suffering I could _end_ right now. I needed another inch, another centimeter, millimeter—

The tip of my kunai sliced into the soft flesh of his neck. If it reached his chakra coil—

The snake barreled into me, ripping me away from Kabuto, but I flung my kunai, controlled it with a chakra string. The snake wrapped around me. Its mouth opened wide and a grotesque face attached to a human spine rose from its open mouth.

No, not a human spine; it was a snake, too. No, it was some mutant cross. Some hideous distortion that shouldn't exist.

My kunai buried itself in Kabuto's neck.

The fanged face shot towards _my_ neck.

My kunai cut upwards, until the handle struck jawbone.

Sharp fangs cut into my shoulder.

Kabuto's hand glowed green. He fell to his knees.

I sucked in a breath and morphed into shadow.

The night sky came alive. Bright streaks of lightning illuminated the clouds.

That was when I felt the intrusion of foreign chakra into my body. Vile, corrupted chakra tried to flood my chakra coils. Agony made me fall from my shadow form onto my knees.

Hawk's voice was dark with fury. "Lightning Release: Kirin."

The chakra and seal—oh, I knew what this was; I knew what Orochimaru tried to do to me—they were a solid _thing_. I ripped the corrupted chakra from my body and whipped out a scroll.

"Seal!" I cried and planted a touch blast on the other side of the paper. I flung it away from me.

The detonation was lovely.

Alight with crackling blue lightning, Hawk raced forward. The air positively thrummed with electricity and chakra and heat. A shape had formed in the sky, flying high like a vengeful dragon, its neck stretching to deliver death. It wasn't a dragon, though. It had no wings. It was—

A giraffe.

Seriously?

Kirin wobbled as Sasuke lost control, but the jutsu still surged from his hands. I couldn't tell it hadn't hit Orochimaru head on, but like an explosion, the strike radiated outwards. It dealt damage. I flickered towards Hawk. A little brown snake sank its fangs into Hawk's calf before I could reach him. Another attached itself to his forearm.

That was curtain for us. Hawk sliced the snakes in half, but not before they pumped poison into his veins. I wasn't too worried about the poison itself actually. Orochimaru wouldn't want to harm his precious body.

"Let's blow this joint, Hawk-taicho."

I held out my hand to Hawk, who grasped it without hesitation.

Orochimaru's fire jutsu was well-judged, a potentially devastating counter to my shadows. It surrounded us. I could feel chakra moving through the earth, no doubt more of his perfidious little snakes. They would kill and probably eat me while Sasuke succumbed to their poison.

Nope.

My hand clutched Hawk's. My other hand formed the rat seal. As my body was turning to shadow, I stared into Orochimaru's slitted, golden eyes.

The incoming flames chased away the night's darkness, and I let it sweep us like an ebbing tide into the waiting sea of shadows.

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I meandered to the hospital with a shogi board stored in hammerspace and bought a sweet bun and savoury on the way. I was pretty surprised Tsunade didn't have Sasuke locked up in the secure ward as he slept off the effects of poison and its antidote, but then I sensed two very, very faint chakra signals from what could only be hidden Anbu. Fair enough.

Sasuke's room was basically a re-creation of the Yamanaka flower shop. Amid the greenery, I caught sight of bright red scraps of something on the floor. I suspected they had once been balloons. Heart-shaped balloons? It honestly wouldn't surprise me.

Kiba and Hinata were playing Shinobi's Rest with Sasuke. Their eyes all snapped to me when I entered.

"Where have you been?" said Sasuke.

"Sleeping," I said and tossed him the savoury.

He caught it. "For twenty-five hours?"

"Mostly, yes." I strolled into the room. "Pretty sure I woke up once last night to eat, but Mum didn't wake me this morning, so…"

Kiba snorted.

Sasuke studied me. "You're okay, though?"

I leaned against the wall. "Didn't quite hit the point of chakra exhaustion," I said smugly. Not to the point of falling unconscious at least. The Gelel stone had healed up the few scrapes I'd garnered, and while I was still recovering from the two soldier pills I'd taken, I could manage to amble through Konoha and even hold a conversation without nodding off.

Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"We're glad to see you both well," said Hinata quietly.

"Must have been a hell of a patrol," said Kiba because, of course, that was really the only explanation for how Sasuke, who was technically confined to Konoha, could have ended up in the hospital. I didn't know what story Sasuke had come up with to explain his injuries or if he'd issued a blanket 'classified.' I glanced at him to see whether he'd chime in with a few choice remarks to let me in on the cover story.

When he didn't, I coughed as though covering a laugh. "Nah, Sasuke just pulled a Naruto—"

"I did not _pull a Naruto_."

"—but without the massive chakra reserves to back it up. He made some pretty lights in the sky, though," I added glibly. "And a giraffe of all things. I could hardly believe my eyes."

"Lightning Release: Kirin," Sasuke growled, "utilizes lightning and ambient electricity, which combines with my chakra to release a devastating attack of unmatched speed. Its strike radius varies according to my direction, granting the technique both power and adaptability. The giraffe—"

I snorted. Kiba chortled, and Hinata's mouth looked a little wobbly.

"—is, in fact, a _kirin_, hence the name. Did you not see the horns? The kirin is _a deity_, and therefore—"

"A 'super cool jutsu,'" I quipped. "Naruto would be proud or he would if you'd, y'know, hit your target."

Sasuke looked ready to throttle me, which was entirely justified. After all, I was the one whose butt he was saving by tossing around potentially S-rank jutsu. Or attempting to. He'd flubbed it, and the jutsu had fizzled.

"When, um," Hinata began, coloring. "That is, I wondered if Naruto-kun would return early with…things being as they are."

"I haven't heard anything like that," I replied. It was a fair question. We were at war, and Jiraiya, our strongest fighter, was wandering the Elemental Nations training Naruto and spying for Konoha and probably writing and spying on women. Arguably not the greatest use of his abilities. At the same time…we had more enemies than just Cloud.

"When he does, think he'll get sent out?" asked Kiba with a furrowed brow.

Ah, hell. I'd brought Naruto into the conversation as a deflection, but now they were rushing full steam ahead into a worse discussion. Hidden Cloud had made no secret of their jinchurikis' potential in the war, so it was a reasonable thought that Konoha would do the same. Wasn't gonna happen, though, not with Akatsuki on the prowl. The outright hostilities among the Five Nations would surely play to their advantage, and my friends, my family would pay the price.

Apart from Team Gai, Sakura had been the first of us to get called to the war zone. On paper, it made sense. A hugely talented medic in need of practical experience. Not a clan heir, not affiliated with a clan at all in fact, therefore not a mouth-watering target, especially not when she remained cloistered behind Konoha's lines.

_One more decent medic is a hundred ninja who don't die_, Tsunade had said. So Sakura, who was far more than merely 'decent,' would be invaluable at the front, and soon enough, far sooner than I was ready for, the rest of us would follow her.

"I doubt it," Sasuke replied. "Unless he has real control over his chakra, _all_ of his chakra, and that's never been his forte. Unlike me. And that very distinction is more evidence to the fact that I didn't _pull a Naruto_."

"Shame," I said. "I meant it as a compliment. Mostly."

He huffed.

I smiled.

Kiba stood and stretched. "We'll head out then."

We moved past each other. As I turned back to wave goodbye, Kiba's hands awkwardly stopped whatever they were doing and went to the back of his head in a Naruto-esque gesture. A quick glance at Sasuke let me catch the tail end of a murderous glare.

My eyes ping-ponged back and forth once more, but they seem to have gotten over their weird moment and had no intention of sharing. Kiba whistled his way out the door. That was fine—perfectly fine, because they'd given me an idea I now shuffled around my brain. It had a single, inevitable conclusion: I should invent ping-pong.

I'd never heard of it in this world. It would be simple to create, though the ball couldn't be the hollow, plastic thing from Before; it'd get wrecked with a single hit from a ninja. Rubber would be _too_ bouncy while metal would hit the wooden table with a crack like a gunshot. Not a great idea around jumpy ninja. Same for denser, stronger plastic. Back to rubber then. A thin layer of rubber with a metal core for integrity and weight. I'd have to test various layers of thickness, but it seemed doable.

The room was silent for a good long minute after those two left. Then Sasuke cleared his throat. "Tsunade said the others are recovering."

Pulling myself out of planning mode, I nodded. "He'll be combat-ready within a week or two. Her physical therapy will take a while longer. I haven't visited them…"

_Because I don't actually know who they are_, went unsaid.

Sasuke turned his face away. It was a familiar look.

"It's not your fault," I said softly.

Sasuke's knuckles whitened as he fisted the bed sheet. "He knew who I was." Yeah, that revelation had made Tsunade grim indeed. "He knew about the mission. Now he knows about you, too. 'A particular nuisance,' he said."

I shrugged. "We were always going to come up against him again, and sure, it was nice to be underestimated, but not a whole lot has changed."

"Except now, he'll target you," Sasuke said harshly. The harshness was all for himself.

"We're safe in Konoha."

"We're _stuck_ in Konoha. You're grounded, too."

"That's not your fault either. Besides, as Tsunade kindly reminded me, we've got a report due in two months. Plenty to keep us busy."

Sasuke sighed and fell back on his pillows. "Why won't you just get mad at me?"

"Would that make you feel better?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

I pulled out the shogi board. "If you're looking for a beat down, I'll oblige."

He groaned but obediently sat upright and helped place the pieces. We played about a quarter of the game, and it was clear Sasuke's head wasn't in it.

Sasuke fingered a pawn and didn't place it on a tile. "What do you think he meant?" he finally said. "About Konoha and…?"

Raising my gaze, I thought back to Orochimaru's words, how they had chilled me to my core. Still did, in fact.

I told Sasuke the truth.

_A_ truth.

"I think he would have said anything to mess with your head."

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	2. Chapter 2

Thank you for the incredible response! Here you go, a day early~

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Chapter Two

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Sasuke and I stood over mounds of documents and scrolls, all of which we'd pulled from the once-sealed safe and filing cabinet in his father's office. When we'd finally broken through the security systems—a project of basically three months; I could now add 'safe-breaker' to my resumé after the massive amounts of independent study I'd undertaken—the sparse amount of paper inside was a bit of a letdown.

Then the realization hit: a good portion of the scrolls were, in fact, sealing scrolls. Compared to the reams of paper we'd gotten through already, this was nothing. Really. But we'd basically just turned my living room into the file storage room of a busy office. Again.

Shikamaru walked in from the kitchen and paused. "I thought you'd finished your police project."

"Just the fun part," I said and covered a yawn.

The fun part being the systematic dismantling and rebuilding of every training program that existed in Konoha. Sasuke and I—okay, _I_ with assistance from an exasperated-yet-nonetheless-amused Sasuke—had formed focus groups, given input and guidelines, then left the details for the professionals to work out. That was, Ebisu and Iruka. Delegation was my new favorite thing. Even with the additional projects, we were on schedule to meet Tsunade's deadline. We'd even hired minions to clean the various KMP offices once they were cleared of traps and paperwork.

"You were up early this morning," Shikamaru reminded me and gave Sasuke a pointed look. As though he expected Sasuke to be the sensible one. Or…as though he wanted Sasuke to leave sooner rather than later? Shikamaru and Sasuke didn't _not_ get along, but they could hardly be called pals.

"Physiology exam," I said, which I'd started studying for at approximately midnight. So rather than waking up early, it was more like I hadn't slept. At all.

"Want a pile of your own to sort through?" I asked brightly.

Shikamaru snorted. "Mission tomorrow." Then he offered a lazy "goodnight" and slunk up the stairs.

I refrained from sticking out my tongue. Actually, I was glad he wasn't hanging around, given the potential of the documents we'd be weeding through.

For months, this information had been there, right in front of us, but just out of reach. I'd wasted more time than I cared to admit fantasizing about the contents. This was the information Fugaku Uchiha had deemed important enough to be locked away securely.

On the other hand,_ this was the information Fugaku Uchiha had deemed important enough to be locked away securely_, and what sort of information would he not leave lying around? The classified kind, the damaging kind, the incriminating kind. Coups took planning. Planning took organization. Organization took notes. Notes took paper, and where better to hide such papers than behind a veritable mountain of Uchiha defenses?

Then again. There was this neat thing called the Sharingan that enabled perfect recall. Photographic memory bullshit. I had faith in the Uchiha's general capacity for intelligence in that they'd burned any terribly incriminating evidence long, long ago.

Countering that, I also didn't believe for a second that Danzo wouldn't have sent his agents to scour the police offices after the massacre. If even a piece of dust led back to him, it'd be atomized. Maybe. Because there was always the chance he wanted a small paper trail in case the occasion ever arose that he needed to dig up skeletons in the Uchiha's closet.

Countering the counterpoint, the Third Hokage had condemned Danzo's actions after the massacre, and Danzo would have had to step lightly for a while. (Surely—surely, the Third had demanded actual, physical evidence of Root being disbanded. _Surely_.) The police headquarters might well have been sealed before Danzo could get his hands on anything.

Basically, there was a reasonable chance of finding Uchiha secrets, Danzo-sanctioned plants, or total bullshit paperwork meant to look tantalizing when in reality it obfuscated the juicy bits. Possibly all three, mixed in with honest-to-goodness police business.

I sighed. "Guess I'll start with the financial stuff?"

"I'll take the coded documents," said Sasuke, eyeing them with distaste.

I withheld a wince because, yeah, if there were any truly sensitive information to be found, it would be concealed under the additional Sharingan-coded security. This was a risk. I knew that all too well, but if we'd handed over the safe to Intel and the contents were deemed classified we might never get to review the contents.

Seeing potentially sensitive information was the point. I'd deal with the fallout when and if it happened.

We got to work.

Over an hour in, Sasuke hadn't yet gone pale or grown otherwise alarmed. Other than flinching a little whenever he flipped a page and saw his father's signature, he looked rather bored.

Finally, I asked, "Anything interesting in there?"

"Not really. Outpost resupply, _Uchiha_ outpost resupply," he clarified. "Mending walls, changing traps, moving certain clan artifacts. It's not even police-related."

"Oh," I said, "the scrolls would have been sent by courier from the forts to Konoha. Potential for ambush and loss of said scrolls would tick up level of security. Hence, Sharingan code." I nodded. "Makes sense."

Sasuke shrugged, and I relaxed further.

"What about you?" he asked. "Find anything interesting?"

I laid a file carefully back on its stack. "I'm glad we're setting up the KMP with village funding from the start. Not that we had much of a choice."

He raised a brow, encouragement for me to continue.

I gestured to two large stacks. "Formal requests for funds," I said. "There's two decades-worth of these. Every couple of years, the Uchiha requested funding for the KMP. They were denied, citing lack of allowance for oversight." I flipped through one of the early reports. "At the beginning, during the Sandaime's first reign, they gave breakdowns of KMP finances. They did, let's see, at least five impact studies of the police's role in Konoha. Uh, the rest is actually a comprehensive summary of police duties, powers, procedures, etcetera. Pretty useful for our work. I'm tempted to plagiarize."

I risked a glance at Sasuke.

"Lack of oversight?"

I nodded. "If Konoha allocates village funding to a specific clan, they'd want to know how the money was being used. There would be council-approved budgets and audits, and it sounds like the Council of Elders wanted to install personnel in KMP administration. The Uchiha didn't like that. Granted, the council's oversight powers seem a little extreme as the KMP would still, technically, have been a clan subsidiary. I know Kofuku-oba would go spare if she had to provide extensive documentation at the drop of a hat to justify research practices."

I paused.

Sasuke frowned and looked away, because what did you say to that?

Months ago, we'd zeroed in on the potential finance issues arising from the KMP's status as a clan subsidiary, but we hadn't known his family had tried to alter that status. They'd wanted an Uchiha-operated, partially village-funded police. That to me seemed like having their cake and eating it too. They hadn't wanted to allow non-clan members to root around in finances and hadn't wanted to be accountable to an outside power. Not that they were _wary_ of being accountable necessarily. More that it ruffled their pride to have to cough up records and justify practices and procedures that had been in place for however long. On both sides, it seemed like an issue of "too much" one way or the other with the result of neither giving an inch.

That's the sense I got anyways.

After the Kyuubi's attack and the Yondaime's death, the Uchiha had continued sending the budget requests, but the rationales became perfunctory. They contained little new information. Certainly no new studies. It was like the Uchiha had just given up. And the additional communiqués—they weren't flattering, on either side. I'd summed it all up neutrally for Sasuke, but there were some really snide remarks embedded in the legalese.

I had to wonder if some of these Tower officials were, in fact, Danzo's stooges. Neither the Yondaime or the Sandaime's signatures were on any of this. But surely both Hokages had to have known. I mean, all Fugaku had to do was march up to the office and demand an explanation. At the very least, he would have brought it to a Hokage's attention.

And there were lines in the more recent requests about a tax burden that I hadn't yet parsed out.

And this was the sum total of two stacks out of about twenty spread across my living room floor.

It was going to be a long night.

After our second cups of tea, my eyes were blurring enough that I thought about calling a halt. Sasuke looked interested in what he was reading, though, and since whatever he was reading was more interesting than what I wasn't reading, I scooted over to where he was sitting—on the floor, leaning against the couch.

He waved the papers. "These are a bunch of ninja profiles. I figured they were arrest records, but there's no recorded criminal activity."

"Maybe they were potential hires?" I suggested. "The council was pressuring the KMP to take on non-Uchiha officers. Apart from the whole funding request thing."

"They're more like Bingo book pages, except more detailed." Sasuke kept scanning the profiles. An Aburame's picture caught my attention. I didn't know him though. The name wasn't even familiar. _Torune Aburame._

"These don't sound like standard A and B ranks," Sasuke continued with a frown. "Politically sensitive, based mostly on foreign soil, a high number of assassinations and sabotage, no points of contact or coordination with a client…they sound like Anbu missions."

And if they were, we maybe shouldn't be reading them.

"Hm," I said looking at Mission History. "No natural disasters. No interference from S-rank, body-snatching missing nin. Can't be Anbu."

Sasuke smirked and turned another page.

He froze. I froze.

Tenzou's face looked back at us. A younger face, maybe by as much as a decade. My eyes fell to the "Background" section: _…subject to experimentation…Orochimaru…Mokuton…strict isolation...uncertain psychological soundness…association with Kakashi Hatake…_

I wanted to make a joke because the juxtaposition of Kakashi-sensei's name with potential psychological issues made it sound as though one might be the cause of the other, but it, y'know, wasn't really very funny.

Sasuke pointed. "Look at the name."

_Tenzou: formerly "Kinoe."_

"Huh," I summed up intelligently.

"Why would—?" Sasuke cut himself off. _Why would the Uchiha have kept tabs on Anbu? Why would this information be in the chief of police's office? _Some version of that question was one I was asking myself.

"Maybe they're suspects in unsolved cases?" I offered.

"All of them?" he asked dryly.

I shrugged because I could hardly give him the real reason: Because they were Root operatives. Former, in Tenzou's case. I had a feeling I was looking at a small sampling of the results of Shisui and Itachi's spying. I also had the feeling I'd be twisting those profiles into hammerspace at some point so that I could make copies.

"I could try looking them up in Intel records," I offered. "Though if they're Anbu, I won't find much." Or anything. Because Danzo would have been a thorough cleaner-upper. But this Aburame guy, the other clan members, too—they'd have records surely, and maybe I could string together a rough idea of how these Root members operated.

Tsunade knew about Sai, obviously. So it wasn't like these ninja, at least some of them, were totally off the books. They were Anbu, too. Probably. They went on missions for Tsunade and took additional orders from Danzo. So what happened when Danzo wanted them for specific purposes?

And that, that thought right there was liable to get me in deep trouble. Ferreting out the inner workings of Anbu. Of _Root_. I let my head fall back to the couch seat and wondered just how high my security clearance at the Tower would get me.

It was _really_ going to be a long night.

So I was almost relieved to hear Kino's babbling sometime later. That meant it was morning. That meant I could clear my head of future problems and focus on the here and now.

"Neechi!"

I groaned, not quite having the energy yet to meet Kino's enthusiasm. He was calling me "neechi" nowadays, which I suppose was his, admittedly decent, attempt at saying "nee-chan." Shikamaru was "niichi." So was Sasuke. Which was maybe another small reason Shikamaru wasn't sold on Sasuke's frequent presence in our house.

And speaking of Sasuke, his chakra was…close.

I was awake enough now to realize I'd been asleep. That was when my pillow started moving.

My pillow being the couch and Sasuke's shoulder.

My eyes popped open and surveyed my surrounding. Given my chakra sensing ability, I was none too surprised to find Mum holding Kino as she stood at the edge of the living room, just outside the perimeter of papers.

She watched me and Sasuke with an arched brow. Sasuke stiffened next to me, clearly coming to a few realizations himself.

"Good morning, kids," Mum said cheerfully. Kino waved his pudgy arms.

I uncurled myself from Sasuke's side and fake-yawned. Sasuke rose to his feet.

"Morning, Mum," I said. "Morning, Kino."

"Neechi!"

"Did you have a nice rest?" Mum was definitely amused. There were worse reactions she might've had, I suppose?

Sasuke's cheeks were pink.

Damn it. Now mine were, too.

"Just fine," I mumbled.

"And you, dear?" That was directed towards Sasuke, who cleared his throat, mumbled a response, and turned redder. Mum was such a troll. Sasuke helped me with chores, declined an invitation to breakfast, played with Kino—all before Shikamaru woke—and was just about to leave when he paused at the door.

"I didn't do that on purpose," Sasuke said, not looking at me.

"Um," I said in a suddenly stilted voice, "I know? I mean, I never thought you, um—"

Intentionally fell asleep beside me? Did he think that would bother me? It wasn't like I hadn't literally slept in his bed. With him in it. Though admittedly, that had been before the incident when he had, what—_not_ confessed? If it weren't for Mum's teasing, my mind would have long since moved on to other things. Yet Sasuke was worried enough that he felt the need to clarify, and that meant…what?

"Good," he coughed. Sasuke shoved his hands in his pockets, looking awkward. "Then I'll see you later? For training?"

I nodded mutely and watched him go.

For months, there'd been nothing from him, not a hint or whisper, about that kiss on the cheek. I'd been wary around him for a few days afterwards, but when his behavior reverted to complete and utter normalcy, I took my cue from him and put the incident far from my mind.

Not far enough apparently, because his awkward clarification brought it right back to the forefront, and that only confirmed the conclusion I'd come to months ago.

_Here be dragons._

I felt ill. Ill and helpless. Because Sasuke didn't know what I knew. He didn't know there was_ more to know_. And when he _did_ know—because he would, one day, soon, all too soon—he still wouldn't know that I'd always known. And that…that was something I couldn't think about. At all.

So, yes. I'd put his not-confession from my mind.

Because to do otherwise…

There was no _otherwise_.

I couldn't do anything. I couldn't reject him because he'd never confessed, couldn't put him off because he wasn't in pursuit. He had removed the _now_ and made it _someday_. Rather more nebulous that way but, by the same token, harder to brush off and move past.

And since he didn't _know_, he was operating with the mindset that he and I, that somewhere down the road, that we might possibly—

"Shikako?"

I turned to see Shikamaru coming down the stairs.

"Why are you staring at the door?"

I scowled and moved past him towards the kitchen, and Shikamaru threw his hands up in surrender to my mood. It wasn't a happy mood. At all.

Sasuke had called me clueless, which was true, I supposed. Well, he'd clued me in. He'd put the thought in my mind, and it stuck there like a particularly foul weed. Now here I was fretting mightily over Sasuke, which, if I wasn't very much mistaken, was his exact plan all those months ago.

Irritating as it was to be manipulated like that, I kind of admired him for it.

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In the days following, it became pretty clear that Fugaku's safe was his own little grudge box, complete with blackmail material and shit lists.

Among the actual police-related work were carefully catalogued indictments against Konoha—its leadership, its ordinances, and a few specific citizens. There was nothing so overt as _Ugh, we're sick of Konoha's bullshit. We're gonna revolt_, but the seeds of a coup were present when viewed through a certain lens. Sasuke didn't even have that lens of foreknowledge as I did and his mood, already not the sunniest, had tanked.

At least a hundred times I thought about suggesting we just…seal everything away. He didn't need to torture himself with this.

But…he needed to know.

Because it would happen. Sasuke would learn the truth. One day. Soon, maybe. I didn't know how that revelation would come about, whether it would be Madara's insidious whispers or Orchimaru's sly guesses or something else entirely. I didn't know when Itachi would finally make his move, but I suspected we had, at most, two years.

My chest constricted. We'd turn fifteen soon enough, and sixteen would feel a lot closer. That was when everything had started. _Really_ started.

The biggest question in my mind was what I would do when it did.

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"There are many things I prefer to do with my time, Shikako." Kasuga's curt reminder that we'd been at this for hours was ill-timed. I thought maybe, just maybe, I'd felt something different in my meditation, but he'd wrecked my concentration. Isolating the elemental nature of chakra from chakra itself wasn't easy_. _Doing so while conjuring shadow tendrils was exponentially harder.

I opened my eyes and barely refrained from scowling at him. "I appreciate that you're giving up your time for me. Would you like more tea?"

Kasuga snorted. "If Shikaku weren't so intrigued by the possibility, I wouldn't deign to endure this foolishness."

Combining elemental and spiritual affinities had, quite simply, never been done or even considered, to the best of my clan's knowledge. Attempting to do so meant poking and prodding at my spiritual core, which was nothing if not dangerous, but I had been theorizing for months and wouldn't make a bit of progress without actually trying something. Being stuck in Konoha did at least give me the freedom to pursue side projects like this.

If I didn't have the Gelel stone, I wouldn't take such a risk, but it protected me from falling into the black. Kasuga had squealed the first time I'd gone into Shadow State in his presence. That was funny.

"I prefer 'intrepid' to 'foolish,'" I told him.

"Then by all means," said Kasuga with some sarcasm. He was of the opinion that what had not been attempted should not be attempted, at least when it concerned one's spiritual energy. He had a point.

"How long was I meditating?"

"Just under fifteen minutes."

"Please allow me a half hour this time." He didn't have to support me so long as he didn't interrupt me again.

Finding the deep, black point inside me was the work of the moment and had been for months. It was as though it exerted a gravitational pull, like it was a black hole in truth, tugging me towards it, though not in a threatening manner. I remembered scientific hypotheses and out-and-out speculations about actual black holes from Before—how they formed from collapsed stars and ripped apart stars that ventured too close, how they bent space and time itself, how they might be portals to other dimensions.

It might be fanciful of me, a throwback to my first childhood's obsession with astronauts, but in my private thoughts, I'd liken this meditative state to space exploration. The trick was, reaching for that heavy spot triggered the Gelel stone. It was, if not a source of my chakra, a concentration of it, which was inextricably linked to the stone. I was searching for a sweet spot where I could poke at the heavy spot—the black hole, if you will—without falling into it. I was like a probe to Jupiter, but I didn't have a team of scientists working with me to determine an optimum orbital path. I had Kasuga, a skeptic.

The idea of orbiting was interesting. Could "I"—this bodiless spiritual entity—move, not just closer, but around? To perceive that, I needed points of reference, not this empty space, and for that, I needed chakra. Trying to summon chakra in this state in any form but shadows was inadvisable, but I needed more than ethereal shadows and short-lived shadow tendrils. I needed solidity. I needed my elemental affinity.

_Too much_, cried Kasuga light years away.

I woke up hours later in the hospital. Through my eyelashes, I surveyed the room's stark blandness. Shikamaru sat at my bedside reading scrolls—clan responsibilities, no doubt. Kino was conked out next to me on the bed. That was cute.

"Shikako?" Shikamaru took my hand.

"Mmph," I groaned, and Shikamaru exhaled in relief. Through closed eyes, I asked, "How's Kasuga?"

"He's fine. Nothing happened. You just fainted."

"Nothing?" There was supposed to be a physical component that would manifest. Instead, I'd basically knocked myself out with nothing to show for it. I could have at least blown a hole in his floor.

"I won't mention that part when he wants a report on your health," said Shika dryly.

"Any physical effects to my body? Beyond chakra exhaustion—_that_ I can tell for myself." And it was _interesting_ that I'd exhausted myself like that. Because I'd had well over three quarters of my chakra reserves before meditating that final time. If I had basically no excess chakra now and if Kasuga hadn't noticed a thing beyond my passing out, then where had my chakra gone?

"I'd guess a headache," said Shikamaru, "but they said you're free to go when you've recovered enough chakra to walk unassisted."

So I'd spend the next two days or so on a different project. Maybe I'd go back to my chakra stones, because chakra was nearly always my limiting factor. If I had Naruto's—hell, if I had Sasuke's chakra reserves I could make so much more progress.

"Where's Mum?"

"At the market."

"Oh, good. I'm starving."

We lapsed into a comfortable silence. I was tempted to join Kino in his cat nap, but it had been a while since I'd had a proper talk with Shikamaru.

"What are you working on?"

"Zoning laws," he replied. "A cousin wants to build onto his house, and there's a question of who his front yard belongs to—him, a different cousin, the clan, or Konoha."

"That sounds familiar."

"You said you'd take care of it last week."

Right. I'd gotten sent on an Anbu mission to Land of Waves. Then Orochimaru happened. Clearing my throat, I said, "I have it on good authority I'll be hanging around the house for the next few days. Think you can give me a job?"

Shikamaru and I had something of a detente going on. He didn't delve too deeply into where my time was spent and how my injuries occurred, and I made an effort to be home for breakfast and dinner as much as possible.

"Pinky promise I'll do it," I added. "I'll be more or less immobile for two days."

For some reason, that did not satisfy Shikamaru. His jaw ticked. "Why bother doing this?"

I had a ready answer, assuming "this" meant my project with Kasuga. "To create new attack, to increase the scope of my abilities, and to potentially have a method to utilize an elemental attack via shadows and reabsorb the chakra timely and efficiently, thereby mitigating a personal limitation."

I could, given time and opportunity, reabsorb chakra from my earth jutsus since the earth retained my chakra for a time. In battle, I never had that time or opportunity. However, if I used psuedo-earth-shadows, a portion of my chakra would return to me when my shadows did. In theory.

"You have teammates for that," Shikamaru pointed out. "They're meant to cover your weaknesses. That's the point of teams."

I snorted. "My teammates are monsters. Naruto is a one-man army or will be, and Sasuke's…well, you've seen him lately." I intended to be light-hearted. With the onset of war, the Rookie Nine had upped our training. We did more group sparring and free-for-alls. Sasuke's progress was just ridiculous honestly. His recent creation, Kirin, attested to that. At my trickiest and sneakiest and, frankly, when the stars aligned, I could hand him his ass. Otherwise, I was the one eating dirt.

"You don't have to prove anything."

I smiled blandly. Maybe he was right. Nothing to prove here. I could and would contribute to my clan and to Konoha. I would continue to grow even without my somewhat reckless pursuit of power—and boy, it actually did sound concerning when I thought of it that way.

"Also," I confessed, "I have to try because…I need to see if I can. If it's possible."

At that, Shikamaru looked more thoughtful. He rifled through the bag where he'd stashed papers.

"In the spirit of discovery." He chucked a scroll at my head. I unrolled it. A Nara-Akamichi duo wanted space for a greenhouse and funding to cultivate some desert plant with promising, flavor-related possibilities. Previous efforts had failed due to vast differences in climate, it was surmised, so yes, they also wanted funding to venture off on a desert safari to collect more specimens. Lovely.

I made sure to give Shikamaru a dry-as-the-desert sort of expression. Then I poked Kino, still sleeping soundly, on the cheek. "Can you guess who my favorite brother is, Kino-chan?"

Shikamaru cracked a warm smile, and I thought there might be nothing better right now than a day or two of rest and family.

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	3. Chapter 3

Teehee, I'm updating early again :) I've been writing literally every day for hours after work. I can't keep up this pace forever, but I'm pretty certain I can update again within the week.

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Chapter Three

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"We have to celebrate!" said Ino, with one arm slung over my shoulder.

Having somehow learned that Sasuke and I had finished compiling our report, she accosted me as I was returning home from a shift in War Ops. Pleased as I was to see her, Shikamaru had pretty much coerced me into promising to be home for dinner. We headed towards my house and chatted along the way.

Sasuke's sudden presence disrupted our gabbing. He waited at the last corner before my house came into view.

"Sasuke!" Ino called and waved.

Tired circles had formed under his eyes, but he appeared alert, even agitated. I had no doubt Ino noticed, but she said nothing about it.

"Sasuke," she said with her characteristic cheeriness, "we're having a get-together to celebrate your promotions."

"It won't be official for a few more weeks," I reminded her.

Not to be deterred, Ino said brightly, "We'll celebrate then, too. When are you both free?"

"Um…" I said and tried to remember what the hell I had going on this week. Everything? There was so much it was hard to keep straight.

Sasuke hesitated and glanced at me.

Ino cleared her throat. "Well, think about it and tell me later. I'll just," she pointed towards the house. "I'll play with Kino-chan so your mom can cook."

"Thanks. Ino?" I began. "Can you, uh, not tell Shikamaru I'm out here?"

Her stare was a little uncomfortable. "You've got five minutes."

"You're the best."

Ino tossed her hair. "Yep."

After a moment, Sasuke said, "We need to talk about the potential hires." Ino wasn't far away yet and would likely overhear anything he said, so I wasn't surprised he was being vague. On the other hand, that little statement was so vague that I didn't know what he meant.

I looked at him blankly. His look was pointed. I cast my mind about until it landed on the Root profiles.

"Oh," I said. He nodded stiffly. "Forest?" I suggested and started in that direction.

I'd told him three days ago about searching Tower records and basically coming up empty. The only red flag were records listing certain ninja as KIA more than seven years ago, when the Uchiha records showed missions occurring basically up to the day of the massacre. Suspicious? Hell yes. But not illegal. In fact, maybe there was a really, really good explanation for it. Maybe some ninja fell off the face of the earth and devoted themselves to their Anbu careers with such fervor that they agreed to "kill" themselves. Maybe this was absolutely something Tsunade knew about.

Maybe.

"Since I'm grounded again, I convinced Zou to give me a desk job."

I hummed in thought. "The kind of job that lets you see personal ninja files, no doubt coded up to the gills."

"A subset of active Anbu files," he confirmed. "There are no pictures or names. No identifying features, just the call signs, specialities and sub-specialties, mission history…"

I totally saw where this was going. A cold knot settled in my stomach.

"I might have stretched the limits of my clearance." He paused, looking at me with a weighty gaze. When I nodded, prepared for complicity, he continued, "I found a few Anbu profiles matching those our potential hires and cross-checked the records. There were inconsistencies in the number of missions and mission objectives and parameters in quite a few cases."

Of course there were.

"Some missions weren't catalogued in the Anbu files at all."

They wouldn't be, not when Danzo needed them solely for his purposes. I'd suspected as much. The question was whether this was enough to take to Tsunade. It wasn't proof. In fact, the discrepancies might be completely legitimate. Root had once been a faction of Anbu and was only officially disbanded after the Uchiha massacre. Sasuke's cross-checking could, naturally, extend only up to that point.

Then Sasuke's hand was on my arm, jolting me from my thoughts. "Many of the additional mission objectives _directly subvert_ those on the official files."

I was taken aback by his intensity and why he needed physical contact to make that point.

"This is it," he said, leaning in. "_This_ is why you're always so paranoid. You—you're poking around some shadowy mastermind who went around the Third Hokage's back to the point that—" His volume had been rising steadily, but he cut himself off before he reached a shout.

"I told you," I said in a small voice. I had. When he'd joined Anbu, I'd been furious. I'd told him to be careful.

He let out a breath. "I didn't understand," he admitted, "not until I was in Anbu myself, not until I saw this—Shikako, there are dozens of ninja involved and hundreds of missions going back years, maybe _decades_." He released me and ran a hand through his hair. "You've had suspicions for a long time, but you haven't gone to Tsunade. Why?"

"I never had proof, and we still don't. Asking questions and speculating will only tip him off that we're onto him. Besides, Tsunade knows something, and she knows that I know something. But it really all comes back to not having proof, because if either of us _did_—"

Dead Danzo. Or at least discredited and imprisoned. I preferred the former, honestly.

"It's that Elder, Shimura."

My gaze flew around the forest. There was nothing but trees, grasses, and insects buzzing in the twilight, but damn if I wasn't going to study privacy seals first thing after this.

"He tried to kidnap you."

"For something totally unrelated," I hissed and waved at him to keep his voice down, for all the good it did.

"He tried to _kidnap_ you!" His eyes blazed.

"Yes, and that would have been really, really bad for me, but Sai warned me, and Tsunade covered it up. I'm on my guard, and that whole incident confirmed that Tsunade's on guard, too."

Sasuke was not appeased. His jaw was clenched. "He's an Elder of Konoha, who's already shown he'll take advantage of his own ninja and abuse the chain of command to the point of treason. What's to say he won't attempt a coup tomorrow?"

I closed my eyes. He was exaggerating, jumping to worst case scenario. I could sense that, yet I felt an almost physical repulsion to Sasuke's using the word "coup." To me, it seemed like an omen, a subconscious stepping stone down a path of no return. On both our parts.

"There are checks on his power," I replied and hoped my voice was even. "Tsunade is too strong and has too much popular support. He can't move openly against her, and I doubt he would take any action that would seriously weaken Konoha, especially during wartime. It doesn't suit his profile."

"He doesn't _have_ a profile." Sasuke's voice was taut. "There's nothing—and I mean nothing—on him beyond his name, clan affiliation, his status as an Elder, and a reputation for being a war hawk. I checked."

What he didn't ask but was so apparent was the question of what I knew and how I knew it, and that very question had woken me in the night in a cold sweat more than once. But he wasn't asking me because he trusted me, and if I hadn't told him he trusted me to have a reason why. It was that very trust I ill-repaid. I gave him the truth as I saw it, but incomplete. Always incomplete.

"If he was absolutely set on becoming Hokage, he'd have made his move after the Third died." It was a logical conclusion that I desperately needed Sasuke to accept. It was clear he'd been asking questions to living, breathing people. I had no doubt he was smart about it, but the very existence of such questions was an opportunity for Danzo's spies. "If he did make a play for Hokage and was rejected by the other Elders and the daimyo in favor of Tsunade, then Danzo doesn't have political support, and I know he doesn't have a strong base of support in the General Forces. There's also Jiraiya to consider. If Tsunade was the first choice, then Jiraiya would be a close second by any reckoning. Kakashi-sensei, even. He was a student of the Fourth. He's powerful, more so now with the Mangekyo. Danzo is too far down the line of succession. He'd have to take out too many of our best ninja and weaken our fighting strength so drastically that…it's inconceivable."

Sasuke was listening closely.

"I'm not saying he isn't a threat. He is. He's been entrenched into Konoha's inner workings for decades, but Tsunade's been ferreting out his spies since she took office."

"Despite that, someone still leaked our last mission," he said, letting the words and implications linger. When I only grimaced, he said, "They would have known each other. Danzo and Orochimaru. Is there a chance…is there any chance an Elder of Konoha would—?" He stopped. "It sounds crazy. It _is_ crazy. Why would—why get rid of me? Unless Orochimaru has something to offer him and is just that desperate to get his hands on—" He stopped himself again, this time with a sickened look on his face.

"Yeah, gross. New expression please."

He waved a hand dismissively. He was agitated and troubled. Go figure. The possibility scared the hell out of me.

From what I remembered, Danzo's whole schtick was about making Konoha strong. Stronger than any other nation, strong enough to dominate the continent, strong enough, perhaps, to _conquer_ the continent. As a rule, I didn't like to rely on my future knowledge—and truthfully couldn't, not when so much had changed—but in canon, Danzo hadn't become Acting Hokage until Jiraiya and Orochimaru were dead and Tsunade was incapacitated. He didn't have the power to move against the Sannin. It took Pein to bring down Jiraiya and Tsunade, and it was Sasuke who defeated a weakened Orochimaru.

I knew Danzo and Orochimaru had collaborated in the past, back before Orochimaru fled Konoha. I knew Orochimaru carried out his experiments with Danzo's knowledge and even made modifications to Danzo's own body. I suspected, though I hardly dared voice it in my head, that Danzo had played a role in the Sound-Sand invasion of Konoha, even if that role was simply to…step aside. If—and it was a big _if_—if Danzo had been prepared to sacrifice Sasuke to Orochimaru once before, it didn't necessarily follow he would do so again. Sasuke had chosen Konoha, not Orochimaru. He'd chosen his friends, not the lonely path of an avenger. This Sasuke wasn't _that_ Sasuke and never would be.

For all Danzo knew, those with true knowledge of the Uchiha massacre would take the secret to their graves, so he would hardly fear vengeance from Sasuke. So why allow Orochimaru a significant power-up and in so doing sabotage Konoha's own strength with Sasuke's loss? Why take action against imagined possibilities when a tried and true enemy of Konoha would directly benefit? Especially when Itachi would come down like a ton of exploding bricks against Danzo.

No, it made no sense for him to sacrifice Sasuke. No freaking sense. It was far more likely Orochimaru had his own spies. However little I liked the thought, it was preferable to him and Danzo teaming up.

I couldn't offer Sasuke much comfort other than to say, "If it's a possibility, then Tsunade's already thought of it."

He gave a short, sharp nod at that but appeared dissatisfied. "You know more than you're telling me."

It wasn't an accusation, just a statement. I knew that, but it didn't stop a spike of pain from skewering me in the gut. "I suspect more than I'm telling you," I said after a long moment.

Then he said quietly, "You can trust me." He sounded hurt.

"I _do_ trust you, but these suspicions—I don't have proof. I don't even have evidence. You'd just think I was paranoid. Also, keep in mind, this is new and frightening for us, but it's been going on for years, including when we—when Konoha didn't have the strength we have now."

"You want me to back off this, don't you?"

I shrugged. "Ignorance is its own shield."

He leaned back, studying me. "You think you're protecting me, but aren't you only blinding me?"

_That_ was an accusation. I winced. "Maybe," I said, but what else could I do? We were silent for a long time. Minutes passed, and we only breathed. My thoughts were racing with questions like _What if I told him?_ What if now was the time to link the Uchiha's downfall with Danzo and let Sasuke begin to doubt what he knew of the massacre. When would there ever be a better time? The possibility of coming clean—of coming mostly clean—made my heart pound, but not in an anticipatory way. Not in the sense of sharing a burden, which wouldn't halve the burden but compound it exponentially. My heart's pounding was caused by simple, black dread.

Sasuke sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Fine. I trust you, so fine. One question, though."

I waited.

"Who or what is shielding _you_?" He paused while I was caught off guard. His tone grew testy again. "You've been asking questions a lot longer than I have. So. Who's helping you? Who's watching your back? Sai? Shikamaru?"

To that, I did not have a ready answer because the truth was that I _wasn't_ asking questions. "The thing is," I began, "it's not a mission where you can easily drum up teammates, not without imparting significant risk, and the risk of letting something slip—"

"That's what I thought," he said, sounding weary.

"If Shikamaru caught a whiff of this, if he didn't know _not_ to go looking—"

"Go looking," he interrupted. "Go looking for you, you mean—because you'd been taken out of the picture."

Again, no answer from me.

"I want to turn over the KMP files to Tsunade," he said abruptly.

I looked up and studied him. He wasn't happy. It might even be fair to say he was pissed. That was fine. Better angry than in danger, and I could think of nothing worse than Sasuke asking questions about Danzo and the Uchiha clan. Those fleeting thoughts of coming clean drifted away on the wind.

I felt guilty as all hell. And I felt relieved he was changing the subject. And I felt guilty that I felt relieved.

I cleared my throat. "Annotated KMP files?" Real question: Do you want her to know you engaged in unauthorized snooping? The plus side of that was cutting out another trip to the Anbu files, which always increased the risk of clueing in Danzo. The downside? Tsunade might be pissed. Really, really pissed.

He nodded. "I'll copy it all out tonight. Can you get it to her?"

"Sure, so long as it's disguised as something else." The thing about confiding in the Hokage was that you would always be confiding in the four or so other pairs of eyes that were always on her, and certain people within Anbu were the last we wanted to tip off.

"Something she'd read immediately and wouldn't hand over to someone else," Sasuke added, frowning. "We couldn't slip it into our KMP proposal."

"Way too messy," I agreed. Then I thought for about half a second and said, "I actually have the perfect cover."

His brows rose in question.

"Can't tell. It's classified." I stuck out my tongue.

Sasuke huffed.

Deciding on a concrete action felt good. Maybe it was more the absolution of responsibility that appealed to me. Shove it all off onto Tsunade. The end.

Yeah, right.

Sasuke still didn't look happy, but he was more settled now. In a way I was, too, having juggled warring desires to give warnings and information and simultaneously to not let on that I knew what I shouldn't know. However, Sasuke had pushed me harder than he had before, that time with Yakumo. _Aren't you only blinding me?_ he'd said, and wasn't that an apt metaphor for a scion of the Uchiha clan? Especially when his clan was so intimately tied into everything happening with Danzo? The more he learned, the more he would want to know, and the more I would fear slipping up.

I sighed. "I definitely missed dinner again. Shikamaru will be ticked." Sasuke didn't apologize for dragging me out here, and I didn't want him to. Instead, I asked, "Want to get take-out?"

Half an hour later, I was flicking yakitori skewers at a makeshift dartboard, otherwise known as the outer wall of the Hyuuga compound. Was it weird that I sort of wanted to get caught?

Sasuke was eating quietly. I appropriated one of his discarded skewers and added another notch in the wall. Just how good were the Hyuuga's defenses? I was embedding pointy things laced with chakra into their wall, and their response was zilch.

"Say it," I said. Sasuke chewed and swallowed. "Go on," I added. "Might as well get it off your chest."

He'd been stewing, no doubt thinking up more ways to voice his displeasure, but he didn't give in immediately. He took another bite. He chewed. He swallowed.

"I trust you," he said, "but I don't trust your sense of self-preservation."

"Rude."

"I want this over and done," he said, his tone biting. "I want that snake dead and…_the other _removed from the picture, but not at the cost of _you_."

My skewer-flicking became a bit more forceful, and I was very carefully not looking at him.

"I want you to tell me before you do anything stupid or risky. Shut me out of your conspiracy theories—fine, whatever—but don't take action without telling me."

Wanting to make light of the situation or to reassure him or something, I tried to chuckle, but it came out as this feeble, hollow thing. Great. "Thing is, I have no intention of touching this. I haven't for ages, and I wouldn't have now if we hadn't gone through that safe. If Tsunade ever properly read me in on it, that'd be different, but as it is, there's really not much chance—"

"Promise me."

Uneasily I cleared my throat. It wasn't my style to make promises I might not be capable of keeping, and while this one seemed like a fairly safe bet… "What if it's a spur of the minute sort of thing? I'm not saying I want to dive into trouble. Despite the unflattering opinion of present company, I'm not a glutton for punishment. However, if an opportunity arose to uncover hard evidence, which necessitated a quick leap into action—"

"_Don't._"

I made the mistake of looking up. His gaze was trained on me, eyes dark and intent. There was too much heat, too much meaning, _too much_…

"I'm the one watching your back, so _let me_."

_too much too muchtoomuchtoomuch_…

"Sure thing, taichou!" I said with an overly dramatic salute and promptly ran away.

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Tsunade took the file from me—the one supposedly on Akatsuki. She opened the file. She closed the file.

"I'll look into this," she said, not the slightest change in her inflection or manner. Oh, she was good. "In the meantime, do try to lighten your workload. No more extracurriculars, Nara."

Message received.

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	4. Chapter 4

The next update will come in ten to twelve days. I'm traveling to Japan, and when I realized the Nara Deer Park is super close to Osaka, I instantly scheduled a day trip there. I mean, how could I not? I'm going to find the biggest deer there and call it Heijomaru. Not even kidding.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

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Chapter Four

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Ino did insist on going out to celebrate the completion of a comprehensive proposal to reinstate the Konoha Military Police. The final page count…well, none of us could be bothered to actually count, but the thickness topped seven inches when the papers were pressed flat. Sasuke and I hadn't written all of it, of course. We'd shoved plenty of the work off to our experts—Ebisu, Iruka, and Anko with some contribution from Ibiki.

It was a bit more of a party than I'd anticipated.

Having overheard Ino telling Anko the time and place, the kunoichi group had invited themselves along. We crowded around the tables of an Akimichi-run restaurant, which were soon filled with mostly empty sake bottles on the end with Kurenai, Shizune, and other members of that generation. Two bottles mysteriously disappeared from their stash and reappeared where Ino, Yakumo, and Sasuke were sitting. Kurenai winked at me when Ino wasn't looking.

Ebisu and Iruka weren't the usual types to join in on a raucous gathering of kunoichi. The former grew red in the face from just a little alcohol; the latter had a rather large showing of former students in front of whom he no doubt wished to maintain some respectability. Manabu Akado balked when he realized he was sitting next to his boss's daughter, but Kurenai gave a brilliant show of giving zero fucks about Manabu's role in our extracurricular projects.

Ibiki appeared genuinely baffled as to how he'd wound up surrounded by a horde of giggling, mostly adolescent kunoichi.

Taking pity on him, I sat down in the chair next to him. "Thank you for coming, Ibiki-taicho," I said seriously. "It wouldn't be a party without you."

"Delighted," he said in much the same tone.

My lips twitched.

Then Anko's abrupt arrival threw off whatever conversation starter I was about to offer up. She very deliberately set a small sake cup in front of me and filled it to the brim. Rather bemused, I knocked glasses with her and sipped the sake. Anko immediately filled the cup again, though I'd only drunk maybe a quarter of it.

"I heard Manda's dead," she said, all too casually.

"Oh, really," I replied. That did explain her behavior. "That's good."

We probably should definitely not be talking about this in public, but at the same time, wasn't the party the perfect cover? Plenty of noisy conversations going on. Also, I figured we had Ibiki's implicit approval as he was studiously looking away from us and no doubt listening to every word.

"You were able to remove the cursed seal," said Anko.

Understanding, I shook my head. "It's not something I can repeat. It doesn't work that way." The curse seal hadn't latched on and incorporated its chakra into my own system. I hadn't given it the chance, and the Gelel stone had rejected it.

She moved back, disappointed but unsurprised. She still filled my sake cup again.

I caught her wrist. "I can't _yet_."

Anko gave a sharp smile. "I'll drink to that."

"You'll drink to anything," said Ibiki dryly.

Anko laughed, held up her glass, and downed the contents. Sasuke slid into the chair across from her, apparently having had enough of Ino's chortling at his expense. Anko slapped another sake cup in front of Sasuke and filled it as she'd done for me.

"We're her new favorite people," I told Sasuke.

He raised a brow.

Anko snorted. "Favorite? That depends. Just how strictly will your police deal with drunken ne'er-do-wells like myself, Ebisu, and Kurenai?"

"I _do_ beg your pardon," Ebisu called over, sounding huffy and tipsy. Then he hiccuped.

"We haven't actually created policy," I said slowly, "only compared modern standards and practices with those the Uchiha employed. If by 'drunken ne'er-do-well' you mean someone charged with public intoxication, I think we recommended a night in a holding cell and a small fine. Which is both the old and current practice."

Anko flopped onto the table with a dramatic groan.

"She'll be broke within a week," said Kurenai with a wry grin.

Sasuke frowned. "Should she not be broke _now_?"

Anko was grumbling under her breath, so it was Ibiki who provided the answer. "It may be current policy, but it is not enforced policy, unless there is an exceptional case and a qualified ninja who can respond to the complaint."

Which opened up a big, fat issue of how many incidents went unreported because there would be no one able to respond.

"Well," I said into the silence, "we figured out the manpower issue a while back, and there's been considerable interest—"

I cut off because Anko's groaning redoubled. Kurenai patted her back. "It won't be so bad. The streets were cleaner back then, for one. Littering fines."

"Limits on unsheathed weaponry," Anko countered, grumbling.

"Landlords weren't such pricks," chipped in a medic I hardly knew. "Or at least they _had_ to fix the plumbing when a pipe broke."

"Curtailing of 'lecherous displays,'" said Ebisu, who air-quoted and everything. We all stared at him. Slowly, he added, "My teammate had a considerable number of infractions."

Then my mind truly blanked because I knew his teammate, and his teammate was _Gai_, and I simply did not know what to do with that information.

Kurenai snorted, "Genma would."

I blinked. Right.

"Fewer evacuation drills for the Genin Corps to run," called Manabu.

Yep, we'd snagged that rather important function out of Shinji-whoever's hands. It made less work for him, which didn't make me happy, but on the flip side, he'd lose some standing when he no longer had the authority to mobilize half the General Forces. I called that a win.

"At least I'll have a chance to duck and run," said Anko. "Could never hide a damn thing from those eyes."

Sasuke cleared his throat pointedly.

"When will you present the proposal to the Hokage?" Ibiki asked me.

"Once I write up the report that requests permission to present a proposal," I replied dryly. "So, maybe three weeks?"

Anko scoffed. "Isn't that only like two pages? Pretty sure I was hammered when I filled it in."

Ebisu leaned in. "Two pages are the only thing standing between you and a promotion to jounin, and you're sitting on it?"

I let my face settle into a deadened expression. "It's paperwork."

Ebisu looked almost helplessly at Sasuke. "You won't do it either?"

"Not a chance. She lost a bet."

Not to mention we had a strict six-month deadline to work with—or against, rather.

Ibiki cleared his throat. "And will you and Uchiha-kun be involved in its implementation?"

"I doubt it. It's like what you said about greater age granting more authority and all that." I was paraphrasing, but I assumed he remembered our trip to the T&I prison. Sasuke and I might be the brains behind the operation, but I'd bet Tsunade and the Council would want people with a little more life experience actually running the police.

The conversation took a turn, and I sat back to listen. I pretended not to notice when Anko swapped my water for more sake. I actually didn't notice when Ino did the same, but Sasuke clued me in with a pattern of tapping on his own cup. When Kurenai added her own efforts to get me tipsy I began to seriously question the wisdom of ninja culture.

I was fourteen years old.

I was also warm and happy, surrounded by comrades. It felt like real life had paused to allow me this rare moment of tranquility. I studied the sake cup, raised it, and knocked it back as I had a lifetime ago.

I rode home on Ino's back, listening to her pleasant chatter than ran from flower shop gossip to the birthday present she'd gotten for Chouji.

"And Sakura will be back soon!"

Her three months at the front were almost up. Thus far, the war was quieter than I'd dared to dream. I supposed I had thought Yugito Nii would launch a Tailed Beast Ball into the heart of our command. I'd imagined countless bodies being transported home, new names being added to the Memorial Stone daily, reports flooding in of strongholds lost and ninja captured. There had been skirmishes. There'd been testing of defenses. There'd been deaths, but responses had thus far been proportional. I wondered what Hidden Cloud wanted—simply to put us in our place? How far back did they hope to knock us? I didn't think for a second they could invade Konoha itself, not without setting themselves on the verge of collapse. We were too strong. When they found no weak links, would they up the ante? They had two combat-capable jinchuriki, as they loved to remind us.

"She's got two weeks of leave. I'll have to up my game. Can you imagine sparring with her?"

Lancing shadow stitching tendrils to keep her moving. Sakura was no speed demon and didn't have the chakra to maintain a threatening pace. Avoid taijutsu and Earth-walking. Watch out for ship masts and other tree trunk-like weaponry. If such is utilized, take advantage of her stationary position.

I shook my head. Ino's question was rhetorical.

"And I've got a feeling she might want to confess to Sas—"

I stiffened. Ino stopped. Her grip on me tightened. We were both quiet.

Ino announced to the stars, "Something happened."

"Nothing happened," I said quickly. "The opposite, really."

Suddenly I was airborne, being flipped over Ino's head. The world spun. I landed on my feet even as Ino seized my shoulders.

"Shikako Nara! Spill!"

My mouth was struggling to work. There I was, a little tipsy, a lot sleepy, and suddenly I'm trying to defend myself from interrogation or, rather, duck the interrogation all together by deflecting—only my mind hadn't made the distinction between the two quickly enough because there was pair of big, beautiful, earnest eyes boring into me and demanding answers, and I hadn't anticipated this, hadn't made a plan for this, and why should I need a plan because I'd done nothing, and he'd done nothing except—

"I—uh. Look, he—it happened—"

"_I thought nothing happened!_"

"He did not confess!" I shrieked. "He explicitly said he was not confessing!"

Ino froze, breathed, and put a hand on her chest. "Be still my heart," she whispered dramatically.

"No, no, no, this was months ago, and you're taking it the wrong way. Absolutely the wrong way."

"There was talk of confessing—"

"There was talk of not confessing—"

"Okay, look," Ino said. "Cards on the table, yeah? You spend huge amounts of time in each other's company. The only time I see Sasuke is when he's found me to ask after you."

"We train. We spar. We work on KMP stuff—"

"I let you go off with him and gave you a five-minute deadline. You weren't back even by the time I left an hour later. What's more, you barely took your eyes off each other tonight."

I choked. "That is a deliberate misrepresentation—"

"Fine. Every other minute you're checking on the other, these quick, little glances. Everyone sees it. Kiba told his mum no way was he asking you out because Sasuke would kill him and besides you'd say 'no.' Face it. There's something special between you and Sasuke, and don't you dare tell me you watch out for him because he's your teammate."

My teammate twice over, in fact. Then there was my hyper-vigilance of late, what with Orochimaru's attack and all the things getting stirred up by the contents of that blasted safe. Sure, we shared something special: the knowledge of a conspiracy.

All those pleasant thoughts were quickly sobering me. "Okay, okay." Damage control. I willed Ino to calm down. "Okay. Here's the thing. There was an incident months ago—"

"Did he kiss you?"

"On the _cheek_! It doesn't count!"

Ino froze. She actually froze this time, not that fake-dramatic thing she'd pulled a minute ago, and given her reaction I suspected I shouldn't have told her that.

"Don't read anything into it, Ino. It didn't matter then. It doesn't matter now."

"I thought the answer would be 'no,'" she said in a breathless voice. I frowned. She wasn't listening to me anymore. "I mean, I asked that because I figured you'd deny it and then spill something else. Standard interrogation tactic, but…Shikako, this is big. He kissed you. Sasuke's always been so hands-off and abrasive, but he kissed you—on the cheek—and it's you—and him—so sweet—"

I was actually getting annoyed. "Listen, Sakura can confess if she wants to. That's fine with me. Beyond her getting hurt, I don't care, but hear me out. Even if Sasuke liked her, he'd turn her down. He said he wouldn't date anyone until his personal life was 'settled,' meaning that he's got to, y'know, see to Itachi. Make sure he's not a threat in the future. So tell Sakura that. Tell her that she's better off to wait it out. Play the long game, however you want to put it."

Ino absorbed that. I could see her mind at work.

"So basically, Sasuke told you that he wasn't confessing to you yet, that he would wait until he could responsibly do so, then he kissed you. Is that the right order? Does the order even matter? No, it does not. Shikako, he was—he declared his intentions towards you."

I hadn't quite put it in those terms, and it frightened me a little that Ino pieced together in a split second what had taken me the better part of two days to puzzle out. More proof I was out of my depth with this. Taking a breath, I crossed my arms. "Even if that's true, there's years between then and now. Plenty of time for him to change his mind."

"You can't just brush this aside and hope it goes away!"

"Yet that is exactly what I'm going to do."

"If he wants a relationship with you, he would—he'd…what would he do? What lengths would Sasuke Uchiha in love—"

"Ino!"

She blinked at me, at my tone, which was harsher than I'd intended. I turned away from her, not trusting myself. I was an idiot, a fat-mouthed idiot. Fact: kissing in any form was not a common thing here, far from it. Immediate family might kiss. Avowed lovers might kiss. Ninja might kiss if they were eccentrics or weren't uptight about social norms. That was it. Long, long ago, I could have shrugged off a kiss on the cheek as innocent teasing. Friends might have tried to make a big deal of it, but it wouldn't advance beyond that if I so chose. That was far less true here, and therefore, I should have guarded the knowledge of that stupid, sweet kiss on the cheek. I'd assimilated into this culture so thoroughly that it was rare now for me to make a mistake like that.

"Shikako? It's not a bad thing, right? I know you don't want a boyfriend, but Sasuke is…I mean, who better than him, right?"

I'd be hard pressed to think of someone worse, simply because I cared so much about him.

"It is a bad thing," I said, "because if Sasuke ever confessed to me, I would turn him down." I met Ino's gaze, needing her to understand. "I'd turn him down now. I'd turn him down ten years from now. It just…won't happen."

I could watch his back. I could be his teammate. I could be his friend, his best friend even, but I'd run from anything more. It wasn't simply a perceived age difference. It wasn't only the self-recriminations of cowardice and feelings of betrayal and guilt that sometimes seemed to swallow me. It was also just…me. Down that road, there could only be heartbreak.

Ino was quiet. There was little regarding interpersonal relationships she could not understand, given the right cues, but I wondered if a complete and total rejection of Sasuke Uchiha had fried her circuits.

Suddenly, she deflated. Unhappy, she tugged and twisted her bangs. "Ah, damn. This is a mess, isn't it? Sakura and Sasuke are both very determined people."

Understatement of the year. I recoiled at the thought of getting tangled in a love triangle, even a bastardized one. Wouldn't happen, though. I would literally disappear from Konoha to avoid it.

"I'll tell Sakura to give it a little more time, but it won't matter. She'll say there won't be more time because she sees it, too." Ino gestured towards me.

"He'll…put me aside eventually. He'll have to."

Ino's expression was despairing. "And I want to tell you not to write him off so quickly! You're only fourteen years old. Romance is not a disease. He's clearly willing to take it slow. But you won't listen to me either." She released a growl, stomped her foot, and gesticulated wildly. "Everyone should just do what I say! That goes for your lazy-ass brother, too. And Chouji. And Team Gai. Gai-sensei himself—he _needs_ a second outfit. Asuma-sensei. Just. Everyone. Those growing up and those who never grew up. We'd save ourselves some major headaches if everyone just obeyed me."

I bowed. "General Yamanaka."

Appeased or faking it, she moved a little in front of me, patted her shoulder, and cast me a smile. I took the offer for what it was—an apology and a truce—and climbed on her back. Ino jumped to the top of a wall and resumed her idle stroll. We hadn't managed to disperse the mood. It lingered, a looming storm.

"You'll go to war, you know," said Ino. "The rest of us are stuck here, but you'll be sent out after your promotion."

I tightened my hold. "I know."

"You and Sasuke will watch out for each other, and then you'll come back with cool stories. You'll leave again and go farther away. You'll have more dangerous missions. You'll get hurt, and you'll heal and fight again. You'll keep getting farther away no matter how hard I try to keep up."

I didn't know what to say.

"But it's all okay so long as you come back, Shikako."

I tucked my chin into her neck. "I will. Promise."

The rest of the trip home was mostly silent. Ino hopped at a leisurely pace over roofs and dropped to the ground when the Nara compound came into sight. I slid off her back.

Before we parted, Ino said, "You can talk to me about Sasuke, you know, if you ever need to. I won't try to—that is, I'll listen."

I gave her smile to show my gratitude, and I really was grateful for what I knew to be a genuine desire to help me, even if I never took her up on the offer.

She let me walk a few paces before calling out. "Shikako?"

I looked back.

Ino scratched her cheek and looked sheepish. "I love and respect you, but—will you be terribly mad at me if I root for Sasuke on this one?"

Huffing, I leaped away.

"You said it yourself," she called after me. "Years! Plenty of time to change your mind! Shikako? Shikako! Are you mad at me?"

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A/N: I love Silver Queen's version of Ino. I think I'll write an omake from her perspective in a few chapters.


	5. Chapter 5

Japan was amazing! I greeted quite a number of Heijomarus and Gemmeis and even a few tiny Nagaokas.

The next update should come in a week. Enjoy!

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Chapter Five

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We got our promotions, starting going on missions again, went on boring missions, went on much cooler Anbu missions, and got split up to work with teams of chunin, which I resented just a little until I realized she was preparing us for leadership roles in the war. Or me, really. Preparing me for the reality of giving life-or-death orders to ninja twice my age. Sasuke was already prepared. Then we spent two months at an outpost as a rapid response team against infiltrating squads. But as for going to the actual front? It didn't happen as quickly as I'd thought it would. We were technically fighting in the war, but we were back up. I chafed in that position.

Sasuke's fifteenth birthday came and went while we were in Konoha. He didn't want to celebrate it, so Kiba and I dragged him to dinner and didn't tell anyone else about the lackluster party—exactly how Sasuke preferred it.

When Tsunade summoned me and Sasuke to her office and slid an open box across her desk, I was fully prepared to yawn. Hold back a yawn, rather. Because Hokage.

But—

Adrenaline spiking, I stared into the box. And kept staring. There was a tongue in the box. An actual, human tongue cut from a body. It bore a familiar seal._ Holy shit_.

"You've seen this before," said Tsunade.

I nodded. Sasuke wore a faint grimace, but he'd tensed upon seeing my reaction. There was a second seal attached to the tongue with…chakra strings. Huh.

Tsunade continued, "It came into my possession half an hour ago. I suspect its owner will be missed soon. Before that time, I want you two in a secure location, cut off from communication."

Holy. Shit.

"Your mission is to do all possible to counter the seal's suicide and silencing mechanisms," Tsunade ordered me. "Your secondary objective is to determine possible methods for safe removal."

Nodding, my thoughts raced past one another. I'd known about the seal and made vague, vague plans to deal with it. That wasn't much, but it helped me from feeling completely overwhelmed. Close call, though.

"The seal is no doubt resistant to tampering," I said.

Tsunade nodded grimly. "This is the only one we have."

I inwardly winced. She passed me a scroll. "These are Jiraiya's sloppy and inadequate notes, no fault of his own for once. The seal disappeared too quickly once the agent was killed. I made adjustments to give you more time. The medical seal and chakra strings are keeping the cells viable. Feed the seal chakra every twenty-four hours, and you should have at least one week before the organic material begins to degrade."

_Organic material, heh._ Sounded so much nicer than sliced-out tongue.

"Beyond that, I don't know how long you'll have before the degradation triggers the seal's disappearance. Plan for a month-long mission."

_Unless I goof and blow the thing early_, I thought wryly.

"I have the seal expansion apparatus, but I warn you, the last time this was attempted, Jiraiya could only view the seal in segments and only for short periods. As he put it, the seal didn't 'like being looked at,' whatever that means."

A mechanism to avoid sustained visual detection? A defensive response to the chakra intrusion of the seal projector? Or possibly some application of spiritual energy, giving the seal a puedo-personality? _Fascinating_.

"While expanding the seal itself is possible, it seems to require a passcode to prevent self-destruction. Let me be clear: I do not expect miracles. Any insight you can gain is a success, whether than insight is in line with the objectives or results in valid reasoning for terminating this line of inquiry. In any case, you'll have your work cut out for you."

She was right. All of that would make things exceedingly difficult, and while I knew I wouldn't be pulling miracles out of a hat…

With a flick of my wrist, I whipped out top-of-the-line sealing gadgetry from hammerspace. High tech stuff.

"What," Tsunade said flatly, "am I looking at?"

Of course, by appearance alone, the frames with their giant Konoha leaf swirls looked ridiculous. Despite the serious atmosphere, my lips twitched. "Microscope of a sort," I said. "I can view seals at various levels of magnification without interacting with the seal."

I put them on to demonstrate and whirled through all the knobs expertly.

Sasuke's head sort of…dropped. And hung.

Cheerfully, I added, "Depending on just how much information is compressed and how tightly, I can hopefully draw the seal and recreate it, after a fashion. Then I can tamper to my heart's content."

"How…innovative," Tsunade said heavily.

"Thank you." I hadn't picked a name for them yet. Right now I was going with Swirlyscopes.

Sasuke's expression was deadpan. "Please take those off."

Well, he did say _please_.

Tsunade resumed the briefing. "Konoha hasn't had much use for hexagram-based sealing, but there's a reasonable chance the ninja in question based this seal's design on a few others." She handed me another scroll, thick and heavy. Old, too. The paper had yellowed. "These were sealing techniques of a talented sealmaster, my grandmother, in fact, so I do expect—"

My mind went blank. The Hokage was looking at me, her mouth was moving, she was speaking to me, and _I could not_—

"Shikako," she said sharply. Her tone roused me. Sort of.

"Mito Uzumaki?" I was dazed; I admit it. "This is hers?"

Tsunade's tone was sardonic. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you already knew."

"Uzumaki?" said Sasuke into the silence.

"The Uzumaki," said Tsunade after a moment, "were an allied clan before they were destroyed in the Second War. Naruto and I are distantly related through our Uzumaki ancestors." Tsunade's stare lay heavily on me. "I trust my grandmother's work is safe in your hands."

"So very safe," I swore. So saying, I ran my hands over the scrolls, sensing for active seals, and feeling none, I sent it into hammerspace. They'd take my arm before they got their hands on the scroll. Not knowing who "they" were didn't phase me. I'd fight them for it.

Speaking to Sasuke, Tsunade said, "You'll guard and support her while she works."

He nodded stiffly.

"As for a secure location…I believe the Uchiha had old fortifications that were well-maintained."

She knew because she'd signed off on a mission to receive a summoning scroll for Sasuke, and no doubt she was hedging because she technically didn't have the authority to order us to use an old Uchiha outpost. Requisitioning use of clan grounds was not within her purview.

Sasuke nodded. "It's available."

"How well-defended is it?"

Sasuke looked at me.

_Very_, _with us there_, I didn't say. Instead, I answered, "Anything without a Sharingan or accompanied by a Sharingan would encounter significant obstacles. Though not insurmountable, they would give us plenty of warning to escape." And I'd like to meet the ninja who could track me in Shadow State.

Scratch that. No, I would not.

"How well supplied is it?"

"There are plenty of dry goods and non-degradables."

"Take this anyway." She tossed a storage scroll at Sasuke. He pocketed it.

Then Tsunade interlaced her fingers and leaned forward. "You're going to ground. I don't want you interacting with anyone else before leaving. Let me emphasize. Not. A. Single. Person. I had a ninja I'd have sworn on my life was trustworthy suddenly giving me false information."

It was quiet while Sasuke and I digested that information.

"Some sort of hypnotizing jutsu?" I wondered aloud.

Tsunade grimaced. "Stay alert for changes in behavior. If it's a jutsu, the source or trigger is still unknown." She reached into her pocket and pulled out…a slug. Huh. "This is Katsuyu, my summon. One of her. I'll keep another close by so that you can relay information safely. When you've hit the limit of what you can uncover, return. Katsuyu will tell me when to expect you."

Katsuyu greeted us formally ("Well met, Sasuke-san, Shikako-san.") and climbed into a front pocket of Sasuke's vest. Like that, the mission was a _go_.

I reached for Sasuke with one hand while the other formed one half of the rat seal. My mind was whirling, switching gears from _receive new mission_ to _how to carry it out_, but there was an extra consideration that was intruding and gumming up my planning mode. "Go" turned to "pause" turned to "hesitation" turned to "waffling" until I gave in.

"Tsunade-sama," I began, "are you…" _Safe?_

Something in her eyes flickered.

It was arrogant of me, probably—what could _I _do better or differently? It showed a lack of trust, perhaps. But this was something I'd changed, something I was responsible for. It couldn't be coincidence that Sasuke and I handed over information and shortly thereafter received this mission. Tsunade hadn't had this kind of forewarning about Danzo in canon. She was taking action in a way that hadn't happened before, and the results—I couldn't predict them. Did she understand how far he had gone and could go? Did she recognize his self-love, how it was disguised as zeal for Konoha and hidden under actual zeal for Konoha, each feeding off the other to the extent that any action was justifiable so long as it benefited Konoha? Correction, so long as _he believed _it benefited Konoha.

How arrogant of me. She'd known Danzo longer than I'd been alive. In both worlds.

"I don't expect repercussion from the ninja in question, not from this, though of course I've planned for it," she said. And presumably Root would find a dead body with a blown up head—or something like that, something that would make the lack of tongue less than obvious. "The ninja has been…toeing the line, shall we say, as attention has turned beyond our borders."

Did you risk a civil war on top of an international one? I certainly hoped not.

"All the same, neutralizing this seal is a top priority. Good luck."

Sasuke and I moved fast. We slipped through an Anbu gate in Shadow State and sped into the forest. I was on incredibly high alert, listening in the shadows for voices and footsteps and, hell, for leaves rustling. When I couldn't sense Konoha any longer, I pulled us from the shadows.

Neither of us missed a beat as we transitioned to flesh and blood and set off at a stealthy run towards the Uchiha outpost.

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I requisitioned and outfitted a room for the exclusive purpose of deciphering the seal. I suspected the room had been used for training of some sort or another, or perhaps a meeting room for active ninja. The wooden floors as opposed to tatami indicated as much. It was large and airy—good for me, bad for flying paper. Within hours of arriving and clearing out a workspace, I could identify the Root seal as composed of multiple compressed hexagrams, which formed the greater structure of a hexagram with one of two obvious interpretations, concealment or influence, or both. The various Yin and Yang elements—because each hexagram had both, essentially a top and bottom—had there own interpretations and additional interpretations in combination with one other. Adding to that morass, I suspected it was possible to invert the hexagrams, and if it was, I had to consider whether the position changed the intrinsic nature of the kanji or if it merely obfuscated the meaning.

Later, when I stopped for dinner, Sasuke asked how the work was going.

I picked at the marinated fish (Where had he gotten fresh fish? Was there some river flowing through the compound I'd somehow missed?) and swallowed before replying, "We're doomed."

His brow lifted, an invitation to elaborate, which I did at length while we finished dinner and washed the dishes. I took another crack at the seal before surrendering to sleep. The next day we woke before light and left the compound to set up traps to give us advance warning. Then it was back to the makeshift lab for me. I delayed looking at Jiraiya's notes and Mito Uzumaki's sealing scroll. I wanted to make observations and draw my own conclusions first, before being influenced by someone else's.

The alien nature of the hexagram left me groaning and banging my head on the table by turn. There were some definite downsides, I was learning, to experiencing a few successes in an esoteric domain and sharing those successes with the public. When there were no true experts in residence, people looked at a novice and thought _she_ was the expert. This resulted in many, many headaches for the novice, added to the pressure and sense of urgency brought on by Tsunade's "top priority" designation and my future knowledge.

Sasuke and I sparred, we cooked, we cleaned. He ghosted around the fort, using the Anbu concealment technique anytime he walked the ramparts. Every now and then, Katsuyu popped in to say a polite hello, but otherwise, she kept to the garden—which Sasuke had begun de-weeding out of boredom—and the cool and damp underbelly of the various buildings.

On the third day, I pretty much tossed Jiraiya's notes out the window. I'd hoped Tsunade was exaggerating about their state of worthlessness. Indeed not. Instead I turned my attention to Mito's scroll. I'd have killed for it two years ago and now reverently fingered the paper's edge.

I studied through the morning. Spiral seals, unsurprisingly, made up the bulk of scroll, but there were three hexagram-based seals that I scrutinized in depth.

It took…a surprisingly short time.

I leaned back and considered the ceiling, how the wooden joints were tied with rope in a traditional style. The wood was carved so intricately and so precisely that interlocking joints slid together, with nary a nail or screw for support. No, it looked as old-fashioned ceilings were meant to. I had not taken leave of my senses.

For most of the afternoon I looked back and forth between the Root seal and Mito's, finally rolled up the latter, and pushed it to the edge of the table.

It took two days of sneaking peeks at her seals before I would admit the truth.

Mito Uzumaki's seals were baffling. The trappings were there, in that her seals had paths for chakra to flow. Just…where was the math? Where was the science? What was the machinery of this thing? Her seals featured language, but not the pure, undiluted language of numbers. She often wrote single kanji with no context, which was therefore highly open to interpretation. It wasn't like my Touch Blast, which, sure, had the single central kanji for "blast." That kanji was surrounded by other words like "time set" and "radius" and "intensity" alongside a boatload of numbers. Context. Mito's seals were naked in comparison. I supposed she could, in theory, set the context during the creation of the viable seal, but there was so much potential for mishap, not to mention the massive time suck, that I couldn't see a benefit to it.

It offended me, honestly, the lack of information in her seals. Because. If these were—despite all common sense and reason—fully functional seals, then what the hell was I doing practically breaking my brain every time I created one? (Okay, frustration made me exaggerate, but the point stood.)

In essence, her seals had wildly differing functions according to her will during its activation. I liked seals that were reproducible and adaptable and knowable and predictable and useful. She liked seals that were maddening. And irresponsible. And a lot of other things—the nicest of which was whimsical. That was the short of it. I couldn't decide if she was a genius or a waste of potential, though I reminded myself that this was a single scroll of her sealing techniques, and there might well be a cache somewhere hiding proper explanations for the madness.

I complained about this after a spar with Sasuke. He absorbed it all in silence and then proceeded not to commiserate. Instead, he asked, "Mito Uzumaki was the First Hokage's wife?"

I nodded. We had not learned her name in connection with Hashirama Senju in the Academy but as an influential person during the Founding. We _had_ covered the destruction of Hidden Whirlpool in history class, and Mito's name had come up again in that discussion. I'd wondered then why no one thought to question Naruto's parentage, and why Naruto himself hadn't asked a follow up question. The answer, I had decided, was that we were six years old with short attention spans and Naruto probably hadn't heard the information in the first place.

Then Sasuke asked, "Does Naruto know about…?"

I shrugged. "If Tsunade hasn't told him, then I doubt anyone else has."

His brow was furrowed. "Who were his parents?"

"I don't think Naruto knows."

My response, though casual, caught his interest. "_He_ doesn't know," said Sasuke, the implication clear. I could practically see the wheels in his head spinning. He didn't ask more questions, though. In a way, that was a basis for ninja friendships, knowing when it was okay to prod and when it was in your and your friend's best interest not to.

Which was also why I changed the subject. "Would you mind if I clear out the underground training room? The small one?"

"What for?"

"I _need_ it."

He gave me a weird look but shrugged his shoulders in a "go ahead" manner.

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Sasuke did not love being cooped up in his dead family's fort. He read every single book I kept in hammerspace and spoiled an ending for me before realizing I hadn't read the book yet. He looked sheepish, so I forgave him. When his brain was about to explode from boredom, he finally went digging through the super-secret Uchiha caches that Kakashi-sensei and I hadn't touched.

When my brain was about to explode from overwork, I pulled out fresh sheets of paper, created prototype seals to guard Sasuke's eyes, and occasionally plotted world domination. That was what Sasuke called it when he read over my shoulder. I called it "world improvement."

We hit the one-week mark, and within a day or two I started to notice a faint odor emanating from the tongue I was bent over. Pleased for once that my sense of smell was so poor, I plugged my nostrils with tissue and continued the work. It was that same day I isolated a hexagram and translated the meaning as "binding." Hopefully the kanji would give some insight as to what was bound. Reattaching the projector, I closed all the shoji and let the images splay across the walls. It was a magnified mirror image. Reversed, the kanji were harder to interpret, but the real annoyance was how the kanji _moved_. I was certain this was what Jiraiya had meant about the seal not liking to be studied. I tried not to use the projector as much as possible, as much to preserve the integrity of the seal as much as to save my sanity.

The seal was like a giant puzzle in that the movements gave me the scattered pieces, which I scribbled onto pieces of paper strewn across the floor.

I tried to interpret as I wrote. If I could interpret the basic meaning, then I could make educated guesses in the gaps. That was hardly foolproof, but it wasn't like I could rewind the goddamn thing to play back what I missed, and I couldn't write fast enough not to miss things. When I was monumentally frustrated by the random swirling and shifting—almost to the point of throwing the projector out a window—I had an epiphany.

"Sasuke!"

He appeared in a timely manner, one hand on the chakra saber, prepared to unsheathe it and stab things.

"I had an epiphany," I announced giddily. He looked at me like I was crazy. My Swirlyscopes were perched on my head, holding back messy bangs. I felt a little mad, honestly, like insane-mad, not angry-mad. Maybe this was what Mito felt like all the time and why her seals made so little sense.

I passed him the pen and paper and gestured to the ceiling and walls. "Copy. Please."

He took them quietly and activated his Sharingan.

We worked for hours. I made it my task to ascertain the velocity and trajectory of the migration, extrapolate relative position and orientation of the newest kanji to appear, and anticipate corresponding loci for transcription for later analysis—basically I ripped up paper and put it in a likely spot on the floor. All the hours I'd spent studying the seal allowed me to do this with reasonable confidence. In some cases, I could even fill in lines for chakra flow where I knew they'd logically have to go, only to grab that paper once again for Sasuke. He filled said paper with barely legible kanji, because he might have photographic recall but that didn't mean he could follow the random movements with any confidence. Rewinding the film, as it were, didn't work so well when he couldn't write in straight lines. Not mention, he was memorizing mirror-image kanji. We worked in a frenzy, never pausing, fearful of getting lost. Once, Sasuke's pen ran out of ink, and it was like the apocalypse had struck.

Sasuke started recognizing lines of kanji already transcribed, and when the images shifted differently from the last iteration, I could fill in gaps and orient the scattered segments of kanji into something we could interpret. I'd go diving for pieces of paper half-filled with writing and scribble in missing words.

"…the summer and spring…" Sasuke called out, and I dove for the relevant paper. Sasuke dove, too. We knocked heads. It hurt, but we linked those kanji to others and discerned the overall theme of "time," though "moment in time" might be more accurate. Hell, even "in perpetuity" wasn't an unreasonable interpretation at this stage.

By this point, Sasuke and I were on our hands and knees. He was writing, and I was pulling paper out from under him and shoving more under his pen. I'd just done so again, and while Sasuke was writing furiously, I was reading what he'd written and trying to place the piece into the larger puzzle of "time" and "binding." So I read on—

—and stopped. I stared at the page.

The kanji for "death" stared back at me.

The obvious implications slammed into my brain with the force of a freight train. And god fucking damn it. If we'd just spent eleven or fourteen or however many hours transcribing instructions for the seal's disappearance after the agent's death—the least important part of the entire seal—I would actually cry. I tossed the paper away and refused to think about it now. Just—_refused_. Stumbling over to the projector, I shut it off and surveyed the absolute storm of papers, post-tornado. The paper itself looked wrecked, chock full of rips where the pen had punched through to the wooden floor beneath. It would need organizing and…stitching together or something.

I tumbled to the floor. I wasn't breathing heavily, but it felt like I should be.

"Is that it?" asked Sasuke. "Is that the seal?"

"That's the majority of one hexagram," I corrected.

"And there are…?"

"Six compressed hexagrams."

All was silent. Then Sasuke tumbled to the floor, too.

"I skipped meals for this," he groaned. "I skipped sleep for this."

"Nice to know the Sharingan is good for something, eh?"

His fist thumped into my stomach, and I chuckled. I was exhausted, but I was also satisfied. Progress was progress, even if I dreaded the implications of the pieces I'd interpreted. Tomorrow I'd pick a different hexagram to pick apart. Afterwards, I'd choose one of the two to study with my Swirlyscopes. Hopefully I'd hit on the suicide instructions, which, in theory, would be the easiest to counter. The silencing mechanism gave me a headache to think about. There were too many means of communication—verbal, written, hand gestures, body language, tapping or flashing lights in patterns, and a dozen other ways. The seal prevented Sai from speaking Danzo's name certainly, but it hadn't stopped him from telling us his mission objective from the Land of Birds. So it wasn't an absolute "no communication of any kind to any party outside Root," which would probably result in madness, given that extreme sort of deprivation, and ineffectiveness. Thus, the silencing mechanism would be nuanced and layered by necessity and chock full of all sort of hypothetical clauses. It'd be that much harder to parse.

Had anyone tried cutting out an agent's tongue and getting him to communicate nonverbally? I trusted Tsunade to have thought of that, like, say with the owner of this very tongue. Probably, its forced removal resulted in death. Which brought us back to deciphering this god damn seal.

I groaned.

Food. Sleep. Recovery.

Sasuke stood and offered me a hand up.

"You realize I will remember every word of that forever," he said as he hauled me to my feet. "I cannot get that time back."

"You're awesome," I said. My head tipped forward and hit Sasuke's shoulder. "When we're finished here, I'm not looking at a seal that's not my own for a month." I could honestly fall asleep in a minute flat once my head a pillow. In fact, with Sasuke supporting me as he was, his hands on my arms, I could fall asleep on my feet.

"What happens next?" he asked.

"We get to sleep. Then we get to do this again tomorrow."

He absorbed that in silence. I closed my eyes and debated sleep versus food.

"I hate Danzo," he muttered sourly.

It shouldn't have been funny. It _shouldn't_ have been, especially given what I knew, but it _was_—because for all the many, many reasons to hate Danzo this was absolutely the least consequential. My shoulders began shaking with silent laughter. Sasuke got all huffy, which made me laugh all the more.

Grinning, I looked up and said, "I definitely do, too."

His grip tightened.

That reflex changed things. _Seals_ and _mission_ fled my mind, and with crystal clarity I realized how close we were, how I was leaning into him, how his head was tilted down and mine was tilted up, how his eyes were fixed on me. I stared back because the look on his face…

…was this actually happening? Was he actually going to…? I didn't know if he was leaning forward or if my imagination supplied the impression. Either way—

"Dead tongue," I blurted out.

Sasuke blinked.

"There's a dead or dying tongue not two feet from us."

He swallowed and stepped back. "I'll just…"

We stared at each other for a moment longer before he slid open the door and strode out.

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Breakfast the next morning was a quiet affair. It wasn't awkward, really, just…quiet.

As was our work on the seal.

We were still efficient, and with my growing insight into the seal, I could more accurately predict the what and where of the kanji and chakra flow. Sasuke was okay with getting bossed around and didn't get offended about using his vaunted doujutsu to assist his role as human photocopier. We worked well together, no doubt about it.

But that near kiss or whatever the hell it was changed things. There was less warmth in our interactions. Less silliness in our groaning and complaining. The overall atmosphere was simply _less,_ with a general whiff of embarrassment. It didn't help that there was no one else around to distract us.

When my mind wasn't on the seal, it was turning over the interaction from start to finish, and honestly, what part of my being crazed and hungover from overwork set the mood? And with a rotting tongue in the background and LED seals casting harsh light. Maybe it just didn't take much for his mind to go there. The thought depressed me.

I'd forgotten his not-confession. I'd forgotten his weirdness after the night we'd fallen asleep leaning on each other. Forgotten the promise he wanted and the heat with which he demanded it. Forgotten Ino's prying. _Forgotten_ in the sense that those things weren't on my mind and weren't informing my actions. I'd more or less been hanging all over him, bumping shoulders, and brushing hands and hadn't thought a thing of it. There was no reason to. We were teammates. We were family. The camaraderie, the shared sense of purpose—that was just the way we were.

Nothing for months, then_ boom_. I wasn't likely to forget again anytime soon. Now I had to _think_ about how I interacted with him. I couldn't just _be_.

We spent hours working in the same frenetic manner as the day before. When we finally called it a night, I realized we'd made more progress in less time than yesterday, which was great, and yet…I was considerably more exhausted. We ate dinner as we'd eaten breakfast and lunch. Silently. Then we said half-hearted goodnights and went to bed.

A single panel separated our rooms. I heard him tossing and turning before I succumbed to sleep.

Hours later I was bent over the seal again, viewing it through the Swirlyscopes. Isolating specific kanji this way was no simple feat, especially considering how the human inclination to shift and twitch sometimes caused me to lose my place in the writing. I'd have to make a legit microscope next, or something more mechanical.

I sensed Sasuke's approach long before he slid open the shoji.

"I made lunch," he said.

"Good timing." I tugged the frames from my face and set them on the table. Lunch was good. There was more fresh fish (I really wanted to ask where it was coming from because it was not a standard part of the stock supplies Tsunade gave us). I helped clean up and batted away a suggestion that I should leave it to him.

I set a plate on a towel to dry, stretched, and turned to leave. Sasuke turned, too. He made a little noise in his throat, but it was his hand that caught my attention. I supposed it was moving at a normal speed, but I saw every moment as if in freeze-frame until it came to rest on my forearm. The barest press of his fingertips. A very deliberate gesture. As an admonishment to himself? Like, no backing down now_._ Or because he wanted to see what I would do? It wasn't like I was going to flinch from him.

I raised my head.

He was looking at his hand but made a conscious effort to lift his gaze to meet mine. There was a pink coloration creeping its way up his neck.

"Can we talk?" he asked.

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A/N: *cackles*


	6. Chapter 6

I might need two weeks to finish the next chapter. A good portion of it is written, but I may need to sit on something and make sure it's what I want. If I go past two weeks (doubtful), I'll put a note on my profile.

Hypervene - you cannot be called a traitor when you ship such an awesome pair! Honestly if I weren't such a gung-ho SasuKako shipper, I'd write something for Shikako and Ino.

Hope you all enjoy _The Talk ~_

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Chapter Six

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Sasuke's hand fell from my arm. He waited. My throat was very, very dry. Breaking eye contact, I filled a newly cleaned glass with water and downed it like a shot. It was a big mouthful. A little water dribbled out the corners of my mouth. I wiped it with the back of my hand and returned my attention to Sasuke.

He appeared bemused. Good. I was more comfortable with a bemused or amused or smirking Sasuke than I was with how he was a moment ago—vulnerable, _shy_. I mean, I'd seen him like that before, sort of, but not in this context.

"Talk?" I said. "Yeah, sure. Um, right now?"

He hesitated. "The seal."

My turn to hesitate. "Well, is it—do you anticipate a long…talk?"

Please, _please_ say no.

He shook his head.

"Then I'll work a little later tonight." I might even pull an all-nighter. We were closing in on two weeks, and while the tongue was still mostly pink and healthy-looking, decaying much slower than normal, I needed to eke out as much as information as I could. Time was a precious commodity. So was peace of mind, and I was sorely lacking in that. I kept ruminating on the wrong things. It might be wiser to put off this discussion, but if it gave me any mental clarity, it would be wiser to get it over with now.

Probably not the attitude I should bring to the table.

"Right," he said. "I wanted to apologize. For several things."

Sasuke had straightened, like he was trying to be formal. Mostly he just looked uncomfortable. I sure as hell was. At least I could assume this was not a confession? That was probably a good thing.

"I'm not trying to confuse you or be…half-hearted about…things." He paused and appeared dissatisfied with his chosen language.

"About things," I agreed, perfectly fine with keeping the elephant in the room hidden. Though the nature of The Talk meant it was out in the open. Hm. I was perfectly fine with keeping the elephant in a pretend state of being hidden. Whatever.

He took a breath. "On the way back from Hidden Mist, I acted…as I did—it was impulsive. I shouldn't have, not when I had no intention of following up right away."

"You explained that," I ventured after a moment. "I wasn't—I'm not angry." Just anxious. Because not following up _right away_ strongly implied there would be a follow up _in time_.

Sasuke studied my face. I didn't know what he was looking for. "I just…it bothered me that you couldn't work out what I meant, like it never even occurred to you to think…"

"It didn't," I said, "not until you…"

"Which is partly why I did that."

We both fell silent. Neither of us was satisfied. An air of discontent and awkwardness had enveloped us.

"And the other part?" I asked.

"What?"

"You acted as you did partly because it bothered you," I recited. "What was the other part?"

He appeared nonplussed. "Because I wanted to."

"Ah." Well, I had asked, hadn't I? Shouldn't ask a question you don't want to know the answer to.

I drank more water.

"I can't take it back," said Sasuke, "but I want—if possible, I want things to go back to normal between us." There was a strained silence. He broke it in a hurry. "What happened the other night—it shouldn't have happened because I decided it wouldn't happen, only it did. I can't think about that stuff right now, but I'm thinking about it even when I try not to. I don't want you to have to think about it, but…what I mean is…"

Oh, he was stumbling all over himself now. _Words, Sasuke, use words. _The more composed he was, the more I could convince myself the situation was not dire. This was not going well.

"What I mean is," he repeated, "you don't have to be…careful around me. I'm fine."

Points for sensitivity. I didn't want to be careful around him. I didn't want to worry about raising his expectations. I didn't want to second-guess my interactions with him and worry about our friends encouraging him in a hope I knew to be futile. What I wanted was to save him from this tragedy, from the fallout he couldn't comprehend. What I wanted was for Sasuke to be my best friend to the bitter end.

My objective was clear. The way to go about fulfilling it less so. "Is that everything you wanted to say?"

He hesitated. Then he looked down, pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, and eyed it.

He had a list. Of notes. That he'd written.

I felt faint.

"Pretty much," he said, coloring again. He tucked it away quickly.

"Let's sit for a minute," I said. We'd been standing between the kitchen sink and the table. I needed the stability a chair offered. I needed a lot more than that—for starters, not to be having this conversation. Because it had taken a turn I hadn't anticipated. Actually, it hadn't taken that turn. It had started off this way, no holds barred, full-throttle vulnerability.

This was not Sasuke from the forest who'd kissed my cheek and retreated to enjoy my flustered state. _That_ Sasuke had been teasing as much as flirting, equal parts confident and sneaky. _This_ Sasuke bared his heart and offered a knife for the carving. I couldn't decide which one made me more uncomfortable.

"So," I began, "instead of me being careful around you, you'll be careful around me."

Seated across the table, he shrugged. I took it as agreement.

"You want me to forget about everything and go back to normal."

His jaw clenched a little. Other than that, he didn't respond.

Breathing, I closed my eyes. "You don't actually want me to forget because…" Not going there. My eyes stayed clenched shut. The darkness was helpful. Not looking at him was helpful. I pinched the bridge of my nose. "You want me to pretend to forget so that I can pretend not to worry—"

"No, I don't want you to worry at all. I know you don't—"

_Feel the same_. He'd cut himself off, but the words hung there loud and clear.

"It's fine," he said. "I'm fine. You'll be you, and I'll be me. It's all fine."

Fine, huh? Could I really ignore this? Could I close my eyes—

"For now," he muttered.

My eyes flew open.

He was pink again.

_For now_. His words echoed inside my skull because, goddamnit, that was the clincher, wasn't it. It wasn't just the factor of time that concerned me; it was his surety. The way he spoke, like he was _certain._ How could he be? He was fourteen—okay, barely fifteen years old, and it was like he'd set his mind to a goal, the kind that no amount of discouragement would cause to falter. He had frightening determination. I'd seen it in action countless times. Again, _not in this context_.

My strategy up to this point was basically "wait for it to go away." However. If he was holding onto the thought of _us_, guarding it, nurturing it, and goddamn enshrining it like a…like a precious dream, then I had a problem. A big Sasuke-shaped problem.

"In a few years, I'll want to revisit the discussion," he confirmed, all formal and weird again. "By that time, I hope to—present myself—um, no—that is—"

_Words, Sasuke, damn it! _My stomach and spleen and basically all peritoneal organs were in my throat. Meanwhile Sasuke was tomato-red and still trying force out a clarification I really didn't need.

"Sasuke," I managed. He stopped, _thank god_.

The red in his face wasn't dying down. There was no telling what mine looked like. I got him a glass of water. Then I refilled my own. When I sat back down, we each sipped at our drinks. It was something to do. While I tried to make the world make sense again. And while Sasuke waited for acknowledgement or an ultimatum or whatever the hell he wanted from me.

If this was Sasuke when he wasn't playing around, a Sasuke who wore his heart on his sleeve and answered questions I hadn't dared voice, how could I do any less?

I was the first to set the glass down.

"I appreciate the honesty—"

Even though I preferred lies in this situation.

"—and your determination to clear up confusion—"

Though, frankly, I wished he was a wuss.

"—as well as the somewhat self-sacrificial nature of your…mode of thought." I winced. Now I was the weirdly formal one. Though the whole situation was weird, so maybe the formality was normal. Like a double negative in action.

"But?" he asked.

"I think it's too late for that."

"It's not," he said quickly. "You aren't responsible for the way I—"

_Feel, _damn it. Pretending the elephant was actually hidden was sort of exhausting.

"It likely won't be possible to forget. Or pretend to forget." Gesturing between us, I asked, "How would you feel if the roles were reversed?"

"Flattered, probably."

Okay, dumb tactic. Sasuke wasn't like me. He didn't know what I knew. He didn't know anything like that between us was impossible.

Pause. Reset. I was going about this the wrong way. For the first time, I had an actual opportunity to address the issue, and if I walked away from the table now, I might never get another chance. I hated doing nothing. If there were an action to take, I'd take it. Unfortunately for me, the necessary action was the formation of words into sentences built upon an unknowable strategy in a field with which I was highly unfamiliar. It was a minefield with no map, lethally dangerous to navigate.

But I could try. He deserved that much.

"I think getting back to normal doesn't mean ignoring what happened so much as understanding why it happened and, from there, choosing what will happen."

"What does that mean?" He sounded dubious.

"We're close, Sasuke."

"Yeah," he said slowly, as if looking for a trap.

"We've grown up together, and apart from me, you don't really have other close female friends."

I waited. Please get it. Please.

His mouth opened. His mouth closed. Then he said, "You think if I had more female friends this wouldn't be happening?"

I did not know what to make of his tone. Was he incredulous?

"It's possible," I agreed. "You avoid mingling. Take the party, for instance. We ended up sitting with Anko and Ibiki."

"You actually think mingling would make this all go away."

Yes, he was incredulous.

"Not exactly," I said, but I didn't know how to express myself without coming off as incredibly pedantic. "I'm worried that you're confusing…notions of family with something else."

He recoiled. "Family?"

That hurt. He _was_ family. My family. More than some members of my actual family. There were days I'd happily disown Kofuku-oba, after all. Sasuke was stuck with me, no matter how weird it got.

"I am _not_ your brother," he said flatly.

Was that one or two mines already blown? I was either hurting him or annoying him. Or the both for the price of one. He clearly didn't want to talk about this in greater depth. He wanted to fall on his sword while I bit my tongue, averted my eyes, and pretended everything was la-la-la normal, but_ that wasn't fair._ To him or to me. His solution was no real solution. There was no way I could pretend to forget, especially after this.

I tried again. "It's been almost a year since that first incident—"

"Incident? Really?"

"—and things have been normal between us. Mostly. Until now. You don't act like someone who's, you know—"

"I don't because I'm _choosing_ not to—"

I jumped all over that. "Exactly! It's a choice. You can choose not to—"

"I'm choosing not to _act_. Not for years. So if you'll just accept that _in a few years_ we can talk about this at length—"

"Sure, but this is happening now, and you shouldn't be—shouldn't have to—" I stopped, frustrated, having rejected "wasting your time" and "prolong the awfulness" as insensitive. What I couldn't accept was that he was allowing this thing to build and that by my inaction I was allowing him to reach a point of no return. Was it worse to ignore your best friend's feelings or try to talk him out of them? I didn't know. Maybe Ino would.

I tried a different tack.

"I'm trying to explain why it's not a good idea for you to continue," I said carefully. "There are insurmountable obstacles. Children, for instance."

"What." His tone was flat and disbelieving.

"If you want to revive your clan, I'm not the best option for that. I'm really not. As in I've never once seriously considered having children. That's a fairly important consideration for a potential matriarch."

Sasuke stared at me.

I added, "Better to be aware now than years down the road."

After a moment, his forehead dropped into his palm. "Consider me warned," he said to the table.

I let a beat pass. Then a second. I blinked.

"That's it?"

He raised his head enough to give me the stink eye. "Isn't that enough?"

Pause. Reset. Again. It was a miscalculation on my part to think the potential loss of imaginary children was powerful enough to combat real feelings that were happening right now. The future was too distant to a fifteen-year-old boy, especially to one who had every intention of killing a stupidly powerful, mass-murdering older brother before such a future could come to pass. The future wasn't real. The issue wasn't a breaking point. Not yet. So what was?

"Well," I began, "there's also the act of conceiving said children. Pretty sure the evolutionary incentive to procreate passed me by."

He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. I wished he'd put on a more neutral expression. It wasn't like I was any more comfortable than he was. Far from it. I'd prefer to say my piece with clinical detachment. Instead, I'd resorted to euphemisms. _Evolutionary incentive_, pah.

"You cannot be serious," he finally said, which I interpreted to mean _I can't believe we're having this discussion_.

"Dead serious." I took a breath and steeled myself. "We've never talked about sex. However—"

"I wanted to apologize and explain myself," Sasuke practically hissed, "only now we're talking about the realities of _marriage_ when I don't intend to start _dating_ for _years_."

"They're perfectly legitimate concerns. Here's another. I'm ideologically opposed to changing my family name. It's not so much the change itself that bothers me. It's the cultural expectation and the symbolism of it all. So marriage would be an issue, too. Kind of nips the whole sex and children thing in the bud." Well, not necessarily, but given the fairly conservative culture in which we'd been raised, the point deserved an honorable mention.

Sasuke's fingers were steepled over his nose and mouth, sort of like he was trying to hide his face. Or suffocate himself.

I'd broken him. Which was sort of the goal, so…success?

I gave him time to recover. Meanwhile, I channeled a little chakra into my cheek seal and swallowed another gulp of water. Hydration was key to surviving these things, I was learning.

Finally, Sasuke rested his elbows on the table and lowered his hands. Only to his mouth, which remained covered by his interlaced fingers, but it was progress.

"Are you done?" he asked.

Well I didn't have a list to check, but I rather thought those obstacles would do the job. I nodded. It was high time for a cease-fire, and if it was all the same to him, I'd just as soon toss a blanket over the stupid elephant and pretend it was hidden again.

"I lost sleep worrying that I'd been a jerk and hurt you, however unintentionally." He leaned back and let his hands fall to his lap. "I guess it's a relief to know you're extremely decided on the matter. You're like an unassailable fortress. I shouldn't have expected any less."

Unassailable fortress. That was me. With plenty of pointy edges. If I scared him off, all the better. Admittedly, his tone confused me. Should he not sound resigned or hurt? Anything but…at ease?

"It's better this way actually," he said. "If I slip up again, I can rest easily knowing my actions won't cause you to fall in love with me."

Say what now?

"That was something else I was worried about, I admit it. After all, if you confessed to me, how could I focus on taking my revenge?" So saying, Sasuke pushed back his chair, stood, and began washing the glass I'd given him.

He just stood there washing the glass. Then rinsing the glass. Then setting it out to dry.

What—

Why—

How could he _say_ stuff like that? Not even in the blushing, stuttering way from earlier, but calmly. Matter of factly. With all the blunt honesty of Sasuke Number Two but steadied by the cool confidence of Sasuke Number One. More importantly, what in god's name had I said that reassured him to this extent? What had I said that reassured him at all?

Finished cleaning his own glass, Sasuke reached for mine—or not. Indeed not. His hand came to rest on the table in front of me. He loomed.

Our gazes locked.

Then he spoke. "In a few years, we can figure out if your insurmountable obstacles are truly insurmountable. If they are, you can reject me. _In a few years_," he re-emphasized. "Until then…"

He brushed aside my bangs and kissed my forehead.

As I gaped, he pulled away. "If you need me, I'll be in the training hall. Good luck with the seal."

I stared at him, then at his back. After all that, he was just…leaving. Striding away like the matter was settled. The matter was not settled. The matter was far from settled.

Oh, no, no, no. Nope. I knew how this went. I'd been here before, this—this kiss-and-run scenario he liked so much. He'd leave me to stew and fret, and for the next year I'd live in a heightened state of paranoia as regarded our interactions. What happened to not making me worry? What happened to not wanting me to be careful around him?

He put a hand on the door.

In a flash, I was shadow. Then I was _his_ shadow. Rising upwards and solidifying. The work of a moment.

I blocked the exit.

Having reflexively tensed, Sasuke relaxed his posture. A little.

"Really?" he asked.

He was close enough that I felt his breath brush against my forehead. I put a hand on his chest and pushed him back a step or two. The warmth of his chakra heated under my palm.

"Really," I replied. We were not done here.

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A/N: I'd be lying if I said I weren't intensely curious about how this chapter is received. Review? Please?

Also, an additional note regarding updates... I have done my best to write, by my standards, at light speed and update weekly, but this was only possible because I'd written the bulk of four chapters before posting the story in the first place. You will get a long chapter in one to two weeks. My plan is to leave you at that point with fluff, drama, and some closure (at least no cliffhangers) while I stop posting for a while and begin drafting the next several chapters. When I begin posting again, you'll get those chapters in short order.

I'm also considering some omakes. Several people have mentioned Kakashi, and I have a fun idea for him. The ongoing update schedule might turn into [several Shikako POV chapters] + [omake, when drafting the next several chapters takes too long and people start to ask if I'm dead] + [several Shikako POV chapters], etc.

Thank you for reading this story!


	7. Chapter 7

If I were doing chapter titles, I'd call this one and the last "In Which Sasuke & Shikako Underestimate Each Other - Parts I and II."

Writing this was very much a "kill your darlings" exercise. Only then I kept resurrecting them in various ways. This is the result. Hope you like it.

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Chapter Seven

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We stared at each other for a long moment. He was still a bit too close for comfort, but it was my own fault this time.

Sasuke raised his brows, still calm. "What more can there possibly be to say?"

I hadn't worked that out yet. I was full of indignation, mostly at being taken so completely by surprise. By the same token, I hadn't yet figured out what more I could say to put him off. He was resilient. That much was clear. The only things that would throw a serious wrench in his "wait a few years" plan were things I simply could not say. I could lie about being in love with Ino or something, but there were too many secrets between us already. I wasn't about to add to them, especially not with a lie so easily debunked.

That thought was a dead end. Any other brilliant thoughts were dead on arrival, but I wasn't ready to give up. I needed to know I'd done everything I could to stop this. No matter what, he did not get the last word.

Sasuke was the picture of patience. My mind was blank.

"You do not get the last word," I said.

"Oh?"

Another pause ensued. I was wracking my brain, but my available arsenal was deployed in the last engagement. I had nothing left for a counterstrike. Best to revisit and reinforce old ground.

And so, in a tone of finality, I said, "I contend that you're conflating family with romance."

Immediately, he interjected, "I contend that you're being obstructive to the point of belligerence—"

Damn straight.

"—and willfully obtuse."

I crossed my arms and tried again. "I do not appreciate my objections being overlooked."

"Your objections have not been overlooked. Only postponed."

"And you can unilaterally decide that, hm?"

"A bilateral agreement seems impossible under the circumstances."

A third pause.

"You're not supposed to respond," I said. "That's not how this works."

That made him smile, just a little quirk of his lips, but it counted. "You might consider saying something that doesn't deserve a response."

That earned him a scowl. "Let's trade places," I suggested. "You say something. I'll respond to it. Then don't say anything back."

He rolled his eyes. He actually rolled his eyes.

I waited.

He sighed and said, "I haven't seen Katsuyu in two days. I hope she wasn't eaten."

"Something relevant, please."

He was silent. He remained silent while I waited for him to speak until the extended silence made me realized he had chosen to follow my original instructions and not to respond to my response, and _damnhisUchihahide_—of all the irritating, pompous—! He was trying to annoy me, tease me, win the verbal joust, whatever. I probably deserved it. Bully for him.

"Say something relevant to the topic at hand. Please."

He relented.

"For many reasons," he said, "I think the right move is to delay further conversation until we're older…and freer." He paused and looked for a moment like he might add to that, but he didn't.

"I disagree," I said calmly. "I think we should do all possible to sort this out while it's new and untested." While this thing was in its infancy, before it underwent the trials of time and pain and separation and whatever else was in our future. Since I had no intention of sabotaging our relationship by acting repulsive for the sake of repelling him—that would be as embarrassing and exhausting as it would be futile; all he'd have to do was wait me out—there was a good chance time would only cement his resolve. After all, I had no clue what I'd done to spark his affection in the first place.

With a steadying breath, I said, "I believe that not continuing on this path is the best chance we have of mitigating damage. You won't get hurt. I won't get hurt. We can preserve our friendship, which I value more than…more than anything." My tone surprised me, the heartfelt nature of it. I mean, I knew I was sincere and, in fact, growing a little desperate, but the emotion in my voice spoke volumes. My gaze had been trained on his chin, which was about eye-level for me. I met his gaze. His eyes weren't black, but a deep, dark brown. It took proximity and a trick of the light to distinguish his pupils from his irises.

"I do, too," he said.

I could leave it there. He'd get the last word, but I was okay with that because it was a sentiment we agreed on. He didn't understand, _couldn't_ understand, couldn't comprehend the betrayal of trust intrinsic in my existence, but if he could know and accept my feelings, if he understood that he would always occupy a place in my heart—not the place he wanted but, nonetheless, a place that was all his own—then we could guard what we most valued.

At least, at the _very_ _least_, I'd given him something to think about. He was walking into this with his eyes as open as I could force them to be. The problems I'd presented—maybe they didn't matter to him now, but in those few years he kept insisting on, they'd matter. Eventually, they'd matter. There was a chance for him to save himself, a chance to come back from this, once he'd taken time to think—

"But I need to clarify something."

I did not visibly slump, but gosh darn, there was no end to this. Worse, I was still looking straight into his eyes. He was not allowed to look at me like that—heated, intense—

He was, I realized, a little angry.

"You seem to think I have a simple choice in this," he said, "like it's a jutsu I can shut down if I cut off the chakra. It doesn't work that way, no matter how much you want it to."

Well, not everyone could Split their troublesome emotions and stuff them in a dark, dark corner. Some people let them fester and build until spilling over. Come to think of it, I didn't know which of us was worse dealing with emotion. Me, who buried it, or Sasuke, who was knowingly preparing to dig his grave with it. Though he'd probably say he was scaling the walls of the fortress. Same thing in the end, because I knew how it would end. He was the one who'd called it—my heart—unassailable. Even if he'd been lightly mocking, he knew now he wouldn't have an easy time of it. So which of us was more pitiful? Was it worse to flee trouble or court it? Depended on the definition of worse, I supposed. It was clear enough who was braver.

I dropped my gaze.

"You don't get it," was my feeble rejoinder. I didn't want to be cruel. Especially not to him. That was why I was pushing so hard. Hurting him, angering him. Wasn't the kinder fate not to have feelings for someone who harbored this sort of betrayal?

"I like you, Shikako."

I stiffened. His tone was combative, like he was ready to go to war.

He wasn't—he couldn't—

That wasn't supposed to happen.

My coherence was shot. I did not—could not—look at him.

Somehow I'd forced him into confessing.

_That wasn't supposed to happen_.

"Yeah," I said faintly, "yeah, I…got that."

"Really? Good, because it wasn't clear to me that you understood. To be honest, I'm still not certain you get it. I like you. It was always my intention to hold back. Granted, it's gotten a lot harder these past few months but not for lack of trying. Not because—"

My hand covered his mouth to cut him off. To stop this. Because I couldn't handle it. I couldn't believe there was more to say, more inroads to his heart I'd hadn't already trampled and spat upon, but as I listened to his budding confession, I knew it to be true.

In a rough move he grabbed my wrist and pulled it away. He stopped there, though. Just held my wrist while we stared at each other.

"You're distressed," he said. His voice was brimming with disbelief. "You're actually distressed. Is it that awful? I'm—I'm sorry. I don't know how—I'm doing what I can! I thought if I took responsibility and sacrificed a little pride—"

"You shouldn't be sacrificing anything for me."

His grip on my wrist was never painful, far from it, but he loosened his hold. "You don't get to decide that."

For a moment it was like we were having a different conversation. Or revisiting an old one. I shook off the feeling.

"Is it so awful?" he asked again. Vulnerability had crept back into his voice, and I heard the echoes of questions unspoken.

_ Is being with me such a hardship?_

_ Is the thought so despicable?_

_ Am I so—?_

In a quick motion, I clasped his hand in both of mine and said, "_You_ aren't awful. I'm trying to save you from these feelings, which I will never return."

He frowned. Desperation made me blunt. For the first time, I'd actually made him uncertain.

"How can you be sure?"

"That's my question!"

He set his jaw. Neither of us had an answer that would satisfy the other. Mine was locked away in a chest, in a vault, at the bottom of the sea. I could never dredge it up, and that was why I was losing this fight. I was losing because he was honest while I hid. He was brave while I shrank. He was winning the fight, but I would win the war. The knowledge gave me nothing but pain.

"Don't you see?" I asked. "I'm only going to hurt you."

"I like you," he repeated flatly. "This way I'll know I did everything I could. Hurt, pain—I accept them. If this is a choice, I choose it."

A brief flare of crimson accompanied his words, and if the brutal honesty of this entire conversation hadn't long since convinced me of his resolve, the appearance of the Sharingan would have done it—an involuntary surge of chakra, mental and physical energies moved by emotion. He was determined to like me and, one day, to have me return those feelings.

He exhausted me. I dropped his hand and dropped my head onto his shoulder, the very same gesture that had led to this whole fiasco. He sensed victory, no doubt. As much as anyone could call this victory.

This time he squeezed my shoulders deliberately. "This is okay," he insisted. "This is how we are. I didn't mean to complicate that." He breathed. "You have to let go of this guilt you're feeling. It's not your fault."

_It's not your fault either_, I thought. _Not your fault, none of it's your fault, but you're the one who will pay the price._ Couldn't there be one good thing in his life that was uncomplicated?

There was Naruto. A pure friendship, a brotherhood, a bond more powerful for its innocence. Naruto would be there to support Sasuke when I couldn't. I could leave Sasuke in his hands.

Though, come to think of it, if Sasuke got infected with Naruto's never-give-up attitude, we might be in for substantially more grief.

I couldn't win.

Except I _would_ win.

A pyrrhic victory.

Head still propped on Sasuke's shoulder, I huffed bitterly.

"What?" he asked.

Just in time I realized I was about to look up. If I did, I might be recreating events from that night too closely. Sasuke might have understood the initial gesture as I'd intended, my acquiescing to his wish of returning to what we were before, but it was a little too cruel reiterate the scene further.

Too much like a test.

It all started here, didn't it? The over-thinking, the stops and starts, the second guessing, the fretting. I could mourn the loss of ease between us, but that didn't mean I couldn't work to regain it. I could endure the occasional slip in his control, if that happened. I could even endure his favored kiss-and-run stratagem. It didn't offend me or repulse me. Just confused and flustered me, but I supposed I would have that reaction under control in time. It wasn't like he would take it further. It wasn't like he would push to the point that I was actually offended. He was too good a person for that and cared too much about me.

He shook me. "Shikako."

"Sorry. Just thinking."

Thinking, thinking…thinking that maybe there one more thing I could try. I raised my head. His eyes flickered towards my lips before glancing away. Clearly he'd made the same connection I had.

"Sasuke?"

"Hm?"

"You should kiss me."

He went still. His face was blank from shock.

"On the lips," I clarified.

"What," he managed.

"You were going to, weren't you, the other night?" I said. "Well, I'm suggesting you do that now." I didn't see how a kiss could make the situation worse. We'd have a yet another awkward memory to contend with, but damn if this whole conversation hadn't ruined me. What was a simple kiss compared to the magnitude of these feelings? In what way had we not metaphorically opened our veins?

"I—what—," he spluttered.

"I'm serious. Consider it my last hurrah."

"Your last what?" he croaked.

"Hurrah, the final act, the close, the finale. Then I'll give up. We'll do it your way."

"You would—you would go so far—"

"Hey," I said and poked him in the chest. "Don't think for one second your feelings are any stronger than mine. Mine are different, not weaker."

His face flit through several expressions before it settled on bewilderment. "But—why?"

Valid question. "There are several possible outcomes to a kiss, but just two primary options with the other variations falling under their umbrella, as it were." I cleared my throat, feeling more like myself than I had since this conversation began. "Option one, nothing changes. We continue on as you wish. Within that, there is the potential for each of our viewpoints to deepen and polarize, but the overall sentiments and wishes remain unaffected. Option two, something changes. Whether on your part, mine, or both. I've never kissed you before and have no particular desire to. Possibly, that sentiment changes. Possibly, you're the one affected."

"And that's what you're hoping for," he said. He sounded too off-kilter to be upset.

Mostly I wanted to demystify the experience for him. Our culture put a weird amount of pressure on a first kiss—to the point that taking a drink of water from the same glass could be oohed over as an indirect kiss. If Sasuke thought kissing me was going to be some magical, mystical experience, then I called bullshit. It would be awkward and very likely ridiculous. If he was romanticizing the idea of a first kiss, I'd pick up a pin and burst that bubble.

"It's up to you," I said. "Personally, I think it's a decent idea."

He swallowed. "This is not how I pictured it."

Precisely why this should happen. Imagination was a powerful thing. Reality would show him otherwise. He had admitted to thinking about this to the point of distraction; only experience could dampen his expectations. As it was, the cloud of the kiss-that-didn't-happen hung over us, and I was all for settling the mystery of it rather than leaving that up to his imagination. And, okay, maybe this was my own hopeless flight of fancy, but if in time the disappointment led to other realizations—like, say, Shikako isn't the only girl I know, and others could definitely kiss better—I was perfectly okay with that. If it nudged him away from a resolution that was doomed to failure? Yeah, I could manage a kiss under those circumstances. If I was going about this all wrong, if we're both too embarrassed to function after this, well, we'd put on our professional ninja faces and be back in Konoha soon enough.

"It's up to you," I repeated. "I'd just as soon go ahead with it."

"Right now?"

It was my turn to be confused. "Well, yeah."

"I—but—"

"What's the problem?" I asked. "I thought you _wanted_ to kiss me."

Half-strangled, he said, "I don't want to kiss you if you don't want to be kissed!"

"That wasn't stopping you the other night."

He glared. "It absolutely did stop me."

"No, I mean you didn't ask me what I wanted. I guess you just read the mood—_mis_read the mood, I should say, or read too much—wait, you know what? Doesn't matter. I do want you to kiss me in the sense that I want you to have the experience of kissing me. If you prefer," I added, "think of it this way. You opened hostilities months ago. This is a counter attack."

"Us kissing is a counter attack?" he clarified.

I nodded.

"I think…right, I think is a nightmare. I'm having a nightmare."

"Well, it won't be that bad," I joked.

He looked lost. I felt a little sorry for him, which somehow made me smile. "Look," I said, "whether it's option one or two, nothing will change between us. You aren't ready for things to change. I don't want things to change. We kiss. We analyze the results in the privacy of our minds and never talk about it again for years." Or ever. "It doesn't have to mean anything. We're friends no matter what."

Honestly, I knew it was possible. I'd seen it happen before, in that time _Before_. Friends dated, broke up, and remained friends. How much more certain could I be that my friendship with Sasuke—a bond forged by trust, peril, and miniature water dragons—was safe? We wouldn't even be taking it so far.

Quietly, Sasuke said, "It would mean something to me."

I frowned. Sasuke was red-faced with hurt or embarrassment. Shit. What had I—s_hit._ I was the worst. Why did I think—no, I hadn't thought. I'd spoken thoughtlessly. Heartlessly. Because I was the worst. I shouldn't be allowed this sort of power over him.

"I know," I said and squeezed his hand. "I didn't mean—I wasn't trying to trivialize this. Kissing—it's not something I would ordinarily do. You're precious to me. Nothing with you can be…nothing. I mean, if you were anyone else, literally anyone else, I'd have long since shut this whole thing down. Violently, if necessary." I squeezed his hand once more before releasing it. "That near-kiss came between us. We could hardly speak to each other. It seems to me that _actually_ kissing ends the speculation of what might have been. No words unspoken, no stone unturned kind of thing. It's like…if it was ever going to happen, if there were ever a time, this is it."

He stared at me. Then he ran a hand through his hair, which he fisted and ruffled before dropping his hand. I was busy cataloguing his reactions and trying to guess what he was thinking, so the return of a bewildered expression did not escape me. Then he laughed. Snickered, really. In a hollow sort of way, but it was such a change that I felt physically jarred by it. Frankly, I thought he'd hit some emotional quota and cracked.

Sasuke was smiling in a wobbly, fond way when he said, "I don't understand how your brain works."

I scowled. "It was a wild idea, I admit. More like an experiment than a kiss. Maybe. I don't know. I just…wanted to help."

"Okay," he said.

I blinked. "Okay, what?"

"I'm in. I'll kiss you."

"Oh. Right." Switching from _wild idea_ to _wild idea that was actually happening_ gave me a moment's pause.

He crossed his arms. "But I have conditions."

Nodding, I said, "Go on."

"You can't sabotage it by being frozen like a statue."

"I'll participate." It was my idea, after all. Or his idea that I'd hijacked.

He moved on. "You don't get to throw this back in my face."

"What is that supposed to—?"

"I mean that in five or ten years or whenever we come back to this, you don't get to say we gave it a try and shame it didn't work."

"I wouldn't be so flippant." I'd reject him properly and disappear from the face of the earth after convincing Ino to set him up with some nice, normal girl. "Anything else?"

He cleared his throat and gestured. "How exactly—?"

Understanding, I shrugged. "Do what feels natural, I guess? I trust you." It wasn't like he was going to shove his tongue down my throat. This was Sasuke.

"Do what's natural," he repeated, a little breathless, "right."

"And I reserve the right to stop it at any point."

"Violently, if necessary," he agreed.

That made me grin. He knew me too well.

"And," he began, "you still want to do this now? Right now? It might be better..." He trailed off, hesitant.

"Right now is better. I have a seal to work on." Which I wouldn't be able to do if I had Sasuke penciled in for a kiss later this evening.

"Right. Okay."

After that, neither of us moved or spoke. Questions were answered. Actions were decided. I was fully on board with it all, but kickstarting anything was beyond me.

Slowly, Sasuke brought his hands back to my shoulders. What _was_ the natural placement for my hands? Hadn't thought about that one. I gave his chest a pat when I decided my hands could go there. Sasuke looked amused more than anticipatory, which was fine with me. If he'd put on a _come-hither_ expression, I would actually have punched him.

He began leaning. Yes, this time he was definitely leaning towards me. The atmosphere between us was growing…denser. Or something. But I did my part as promised and inched forward, too.

Then I hesitated.

He paused in response. Our eyes were open and watchful. There was a moment when I was pretty sure it wasn't going to happen, that it was ruined by the stutter in my resolution, that we'd call it off and move on. As that would solve nothing, I was the one to lean forward and brush my lips against his.

His enthusiasm pushed him forward with enough force to make our teeth click. He softened and withdrew a little. Recovering from surprise, I closed my eyes. And with that, I supposed we were kissing. Mouth to mouth. Sharing breath as we both stayed in that position for a long moment.

I knew it. Awkward and ridiculous.

Sasuke had the greater mass and momentum prior to collision. Simple physics said that momentum was conserved in this instance, and my velocity's direction shifted to account for Sasuke's. Then the law of action and reaction came into play when the shoji—whatever. Point being, my back was pressed against the door. I was sort of trapped between it and Sasuke, his chakra a warm glow underneath his skin.

He drew back slightly and pecked my lips before brushing his across mine again. As for me? I kept my lips parted and pliable and basically tried not to ruin it for him. When he tilted his head, I didn't laugh at the sensation of our noses bumping. When he pressed, I pressed back.

If the kiss was as weird as I'd thought it'd be, no big deal, and if one of his hands dropped to my waist, so what? His lips and hands were soft. There was nothing about this that was not gentle.

His hand brushed across my neck as he cupped my jaw. The change didn't startle me. What it did was change the angle of the kiss. What it did was make the kiss firmer. What it did was remove a point of mobility I hadn't realized I had possessed.

That hand on my waist circled to my back, while the one on my jaw shifted, too. Everything was moving, as though he was the one who didn't know what to do with his hands now, so he was trying everything. His fingers slid into my hair.

His lips parted and pressed forward again and—

—and I was starting to think my idea, rather than wild, was harebrained.

I did not have control here.

I was not frightened.

I was overwhelmed.

My lips were hot.

As was my jaw and throat. Hot wherever skin met skin. Now even the nape of my neck—

I broke the kiss and shoved him back. My hand flew to my lips.

"What's that?" I said. "What are you doing?"

Catching himself, Sasuke blinked. The Sharingan spun. He looked absolutely baffled.

"What am I—what do you _think_?" he croaked.

"No, not the kiss! Your chakra was—you were channeling your chakra—" My lips still felt warmer than body temperature. Focusing now, I could sense his chakra churning in his body, a smoldering ember stoked to a blaze. Now that I wasn't distracted by lips and hands and bumping noses, it was clear enough what had happened.

"Chakra?" He sounded lost. "What? I didn't—my chakra didn't—"

Maybe when he focused on it, he could sense how close his chakra was to the surface. From there it was simple to extrapolate what had happened with me. If he wasn't controlling it, if he'd channeled it subconsciously—

Sasuke blushed to his roots.

Chakra. Physical and mental energies. Body and spirit. Emotional stimuli incited physical responses, which were moderated according to one's will. In civilians, it would end there. Ninja had an abundance of chakra and therefore additional outlet, and for ninjas without unnaturally good control over their chakra, some measure of unintentional chakra manipulation was only natural. I assumed.

"I'm sure it's perfectly normal and pleasant," I assured him shakily. "It's no different than medical chakra in this regard. It just surprised me. I'm a sensor, so the effect is more potent. It startled me."

Anyone else would simply have felt warm, something easily mistaken for effects of their own internal mechanisms, i.e. blood vessels dilating and heartbeat accelerating, but for me, foreign chakra sliding over my skin, into my skin… It was almost certainly an effect that had been studied in depth, only I had somehow missed this page in my biology books. Sharing chakra, possibly stimulating a partner's responses via chakra.

_I like you, Shikako. _He was right. I hadn't understood. I still didn't—I couldn't— On an intellectual level I'd known some amount of physical attraction was normal and likely, but scope of it floored me. No different than medical chakra. Yet right.

Involuntary chakra manipulation. It gave away far more than anyone would be comfortable with.

Raw desire.

Incapable of moving, I was still barring the exit. Sasuke stomped across the kitchen in a very un-ninja-like manner. Then he broke the latch to the window, shoved it open, and disappeared.

The plan had seemed reasonable. A kiss. He'd kissed my cheek. He'd kissed my forehead. He'd remained cool and calm throughout. Why had this been so different?

Hands and lips had the greatest number of mechanoreceptors in the body, generating incredible sensitivity to touch. That was why people liked kissing. The science was clear, but it wasn't enough right now, not enough to explain…Sasuke. It wasn't like I'd jumped him out of the blue. He must have had some idea—but he'd clearly been shocked.

Why, _why_ had this been so different?

Because I'd kissed back.

Ah.

That was it. I'd kissed back, and suddenly Sasuke wasn't dealing with a teasing show of affection. He was dealing with the girl he liked actively kissing him back. No matter how chaste the kiss, his hands were on her skin, his lips were on hers, while she—me—I—

Breathing heavily, I moved away from the door.

The plan could still have gone off fine. Not as I'd intended, but fine. Sasuke wouldn't have realized what his chakra was doing, and the kiss would have concluded with option number one as the result. I'd have been…unsteadied by the experience, but I'd have come away with additional knowledge and without suffering significant awkwardness with Sasuke. Rather, I'd have been the only one of us aware of it, and I could probably bury my uneasiness under my workload and mask it at other times. So, yes. The plan could have gone off fine. If I hadn't blown my top.

_The best laid plans of mice and men_…

Of ninja, too.

And it was a shit plan the first place. What had I been thinking? What was he thinking, agreeing to it? Where did we go from here?

Further thought along those lines quickly eroded.

Spinning around, I braced myself.

Sasuke was stomping back towards me. I didn't need to be chakra-sensitive to know that.

The nightingale floors of the Uchiha buildings got their name from the chirping noise they made when trod upon. They weren't designed that way; the noise was actually a sign of wear. Under the pressure of body weight, the metal clamps that were attached to the floorboards grated on the nails that affixed them. Metal against metal. Chirping. Popular theory said that the daimyo and lords constructed their palaces with nightingale flooring to herald the approach of assassins. Bullshit. A ninja could avoid setting off that noise in several very simple ways.

Not that Sasuke was bothering with such tactics.

The floor chirped loudly. Then stopped. The shoji slid open.

Sasuke's face was absolutely steaming. He pointed a finger at me. "Option three, something unexpected happens. This did not turn out in any way you foresaw, and in _five or ten years_, I'm going to remind you that you don't know everything and you should re-examine your assumptions and give dating me a try!"

After screeching at me, he slid the shoji shut so hard it bounced off the frame. I strode to various cabinets, ripped them open, and yanked out every pot and pan I could lay hands on. I busied myself banging them around the kitchen. Loudly. After which, I reorganized them all to an exacting degree of perfection. And sort of washed them at the same time.

This mission could not be over soon enough.

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A/N: I'm not sure if this needs clarification or not, but the thing with the chakra and the kiss will NOT be a magic pill for awakening romantic feelings. Like, "here's normal-human-me with purely platonic feelings. Then here's ninja-me with chakra kisses—oh boy, let's make out." That would remove the human element and cheapen Shikako's journey. The chakra's not a game-changer, just something new for Shikako to think about. More importantly, I enjoy embarrassing the stuffing out of them XD

So, updates. I actually cut this chapter earlier than I'd intended, which means I'll post one more chapter to close out this whole mess. Only a small part of it is written, so I don't have a good sense of the length or how long it will take. Maybe up to a month? I've got a lot going on right now. If there's a significant delay, I'll post a note to my profile.


	8. Chapter 8

Check out the _stunning_ new cover art by Kmichie! Click on the picture to see their expressions better. She did an incredible job! She's got more artwork on tumblr: kmichiedreams.

There's some stuff about kanji and hiragana in this chapter, which—well—I did research this, and while I came away with a better understanding of why a single kanji can have multiple interpretations, I don't understand enough to know if what I wrote below makes a whole lot of sense. Feel free to correct me if you know more than I do, and I'll see if I can improve what's written.

Also, there's a reference to DoS Chapter 24 during the Chunin Exams when Shikako warps a metal railing with her hands. I'm reminding you of that here for *reasons*.

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Chapter Eight

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I was going to torch the Uchiha outpost. It was doomed. It was a prison. Prison was bad. Prison only grew worse over time. Hence, it was high time to blow up prison sky high.

Logic, a beautiful thing.

Sasuke and I existed in a state of unfaltering politeness, when forced to interact, to cover up the fact that we were avoiding each other like the plague. I worked on the seal in a frenzy like no other. Sasuke left trays of food outside my workroom. We had not decided on that course of action together in advance, but I applauded his initiative. Cutting down the time spent walking to and from the kitchen would only increase my productivity. That was the reason. Of course it was. (The kitchen was radioactive. The fact could not be understated.)

Two days after The Talk-Turned-Fiasco, the Root seal finally expired. It was a relief. The mission wasn't over, of course; I would turn my attention to my notes instead. However, the seal's disappearance was the start of the countdown. I'd hit the limit of the information I could analyze, and that analysis would come from my own brain, with no need for input from other parties. Excellent.

First step, organization. The papers that made up the puzzle needed to be bound together. As a training exercise, I used the Shadow Neckbind and Shadow Stitching jutsus in tandem, the technique formulated when I tried to create an arm for Shikamaru—a jutsu I had theorized and Dad had implemented. Now I could do it, too, and actually stitching stuff together was a great way to practice it. I punched holes manually. Then a long, thin shadow hand holding a darning needle moved through holes, drawing yarn behind it. (In the end, the task was a completely time-consuming and unreasonable application of the jutsu due to the nature of tangled yarn. I gave up on it.)

There were still gaps in the seal's matrix. I used red ink to fill in those I couldn't know with certainty. Sasuke and I had, in fact, hit upon the silencing mechanism in the Root seal. It was every bit as nuanced as I'd feared, like a legal document with countless appendices and sub-clauses. Worse, it was like a legal document that I'd started reading in the middle, with no clear understanding of where it began or ended. I had nightmares about the thing.

Sometimes I took a break and studied the medical seal that had been keeping the tongue semi-alive. The seal hadn't stored chakra; that was impossible as far as I knew. Instead, the seal had cycled chakra through its network and meted out chakra over the course of a day, not simply pouring its contents wholesale into the tongue cells. So. Not proper chakra storage, but it was still pretty awesome. It was sort of like chakra, when stored in contained pocket dimension, acted like a gas and dissipated, even through the seal itself. It was unusable. However, this seal's cyclical path channeled the chakra, causing it to behave more like liquid in the way it took on a stream-like form and leaked out into channels. The psuedo-liquid form wasn't a solution for long-term storage of chakra, though. The chakra would still dissipate too rapidly to justify the initial chakra cost.

Fun to think about though.

I hadn't a clue what Sasuke was up to during all this time. We were well into our third week on this mission, so he was probably contemplating something drastic.

Like torching the outpost. I was seriously considering it.

One day, in an effort to be normal, I asked Sasuke where the fish we had for dinner was coming from. He led me to what I'd assumed was an old outhouse. More like a shack in a corner of the compound than anything else. The inside was suffused with the musty smell of earth and rotting wood.

With a quick application of chakra, a torch on the wall lit. Then a stream of chakra ran downward into a tunnel, lighting torch after torch. An underground passage. Very cool. We walked down, down, down at a slant. I fanned out my chakra from my feet across and into the ground to keep from sliding. The earthen composition of the walls changed from packed soil to red clay to darker clay to rock that dripped with water. The tunnel opened up.

Whoa.

It was a small cave system formed by an underwater river, probably a tributary of the Naka. The river provided an endless supply of fresh water and a food source in the form of cave fish. There was absolutely no topological evidence from the surface to suggest an underwater river, not any that I recognized, but an Uchiha had found it long ago. Just try to lay siege to this place. Brilliant.

"Makes you wonder why the Uchiha didn't start a hot springs resort," I joked when we were outside again. "Here's all the running water they needed, and with their fire-nature chakra to keep the furnaces running…jeez, what a missed opportunity."

"Guess they were too busy fighting off the Senju."

I eyed him sideways. It surprised me to hear him reference the Senju. Pre-village conflicts and loyalties were barely touched on in the Academy.

"Been brushing up on history?" I probed.

He nodded. "There's about four hundred years of Uchiha history documented in the vaults below the clan hall."

Not gonna lie, I really wanted access to that for all sorts of reasons, but this was already the longest interaction we'd had in five days. I preferred to keep it light.

"Maybe the hot springs would've mellowed everyone out sooner," I mused.

"If it was at all profitable," he said dryly, "it would have become yet another resource to fight over."

"Yeah, yeah, but just think. Madara Uchiha would have inherited a spa."

Sasuke paused.

It was funny. It _was. _I saw his lips twitch.

We looked at each other a beat too long. As one, we averted our gazes.

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Missions typically had concrete goals. Retrieve thing. Protect thing. Transport thing. When completed, report home. All the while, monitor chakra levels and physical wellbeing. I knew how far I could push myself on a typical mission. I knew when to rest and how much rest to get. This was different. Doing all possible to decipher a highly complex seal was a big, broad objective. It was hard to justify a full night's rest when a few extra hours of wakefulness might translate to a breakthrough. It was harder to judge mental fatigue and not to cross that line where too much was _too much_. I was all for going above and beyond for something so important, but that mindset let to my current predicament.

I was lying on the hardwood floor with papers scattered all around me. Sasuke stood over me with his arms crossed. His expression was disapproving.

"You're not sleeping," he said.

"I was literally just sleeping." I rubbed my tired eyes.

"You're not sleeping _well_."

True enough.

"You were fine until a few days ago," he said.

Because I'd had him to talk to. Our interactions had paced me. He'd distracted me from the work, and that provided mental rest. Now I was using work to distract myself from _him_.

"Maybe," I mused aloud, "we should talk about what happened."

His reaction was immediate and horrified. "_Talk? _Are you out of your mind? That is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place."

I was already chuckling before he could finish. I held the chuckles inside so that they shook my shoulders and made my stomach ache but didn't make much sound, even when the look on Sasuke's face turned the chuckling into full-blown laughter.

"The _worst_," he muttered when he caught on.

If my coping mechanism was to make horrible jokes, it was quite possible I needed a new outlet.

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The Uchiha's underground training room was like the inside of a box. Mostly flat, earthen walls and ceilings. With all the paraphernalia removed and stored in a scroll, it looked more like a large grave. A table I'd designed myself stood in the center of the room. Flat and rectangular, the table was split by a net through the middle.

Sasuke eyed it all suspiciously before turning that look on me. I tossed him a paddle. It had occurred to me that the paddles actually resembled the fans that gave his clan its name. Thus, I'd thoughtfully painted the paddles with Uchiha colors in mind.

He snatched it from the air without taking his eyes from me.

"The name of the game is friendly competition," I began. "Two ninjas. Two paddles. One rubber ball." Which I bounced off my paddle.

I'd repurposed some rubber from old weaponry, melted the rubber to a gooey glob, reconfigured a barrier seal to a miniature size, inserted a timing function into the seal, and removed the safety mechanism that prevented solid things like arms from getting chopped off during the seal's activation. I stuffed the tiny, tiny seal tag into the rubber goop, activated it so that excess rubber was cut away, and dropped it all into a glass of water in the refrigerator. When the tag's timer went off, its disappearance exposed the naked ball of rubber to cold water and caused the rubber to solidify.

The result was adequate.

Continuing my spiel to Sasuke, I said, "The real name of the game is ping pong. I considered calling it table tennis, but that invites the question 'what is tennis' and I can't be bothered to explain every time."

"What _is_ tennis?"

"Precisely," I said with a nod. "Okay, rules. The ball must bounce on your side of the table _once_ before going over the net, else you forfeit a point. The opponent can't let the ball bounce twice on their side or they forfeit a point. Walls and the ceiling are fair game for rebounding. The floor is off limits. The ball cannot hit the net on a serve. Um…"

I was pretty sure I'd forgotten some of the particulars, and having the walls and ceiling to play off would affect the whole game. Drastically.

This was _ninja_ ping pong. I primed my shadows.

"Sasuke Uchiha, I challenge you to the world's first game of ping pong."

"This is ridiculous," said Sasuke.

A highly lethal ninja whacking around a bouncy ball—ridiculous? Yeah. Utterly so.

"Tough talk," I scoffed and moved into position. "Think you need a practice round?"

He straightened. The Sharingan whirled.

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Sasuke and I glared at each other from across the ping pong table. We breathed heavily while sweat dripped from our brows. I was damn certain we both knew how ridiculous it was to get worked up about this, but that did nothing to lessen our mutual annoyance.

"You're changing the rules to your benefit," Sasuke accused. "You can't do that."

"This is the testing phase. I'm _adjusting_ the rules to improve gameplay."

"Gameplay that uniquely suits your abilities," he said.

"Oh, and the Sharingan's not a massive cheat?"

A broken section of the ceiling gave way to gravity and fell. Neither Sasuke nor I blinked.

"The Sharingan deals no damage to the opponent," he said, paraphrasing an earlier point.

"Neither does Shadow Paralysis."

"The Sharingan doesn't cross the boundary line."

"Its genjutsu arguably does," I said, "so if we're nitpicking, targeted genjutsu are off the table, too. Area of effect genjutsu on your own side is still fair game."

"Which you can see through in an instant."

"Well, that's just talent. I'm not going to apologize for it. Furthermore, the Sharingan lets you do the same, so I don't accept your grumbling as a point worth considering."

We returned to glaring.

"Fine," said Sasuke, "but next time, I pick the rules."

"They aren't arbitrary," I said through gritted teeth. "It's a game, not a spar. At the end of this, it's meant to have a defined set of rules, once we work through various iterations."

"Next time, I get to pick the iteration."

I nearly screamed.

That. Was. _It_.

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The Root seal didn't have just one function like my Touch Blast or barrier seals. Its purpose was vast in scope, which translated to a huge volume of information. The "lines" of the hexagrams were, in fact, text. Mostly kanji. Step far enough away from the page and the spaces in the characters diminished to nothing. An apparently solid line was the result.

The silencing mechanism was every bit as heinous as I'd imagined, but there was a damn good reason Tsunade wanted it deciphered.

All we needed was for Sai to speak out. He needed to name a single mission for which he'd been given orders that subverted those of the Hokage, and he needed to name Danzo as the instigator. That was enough to warrant Danzo's interrogation and was absolutely sufficient for the rounding up of his agents and subsequent altering of their seals. From there, the evidence would mount.

In a military dictatorship, you did not work behind your leader's back to achieve your own political ends.

You did not fucking do that.

The trial would be swift and merciless.

At the same time, you did not voice suspicions without an iota of proof, not against an Elder. You'd only get one chance at it. Retribution would be lethal.

When I finally pushed aside the notes on the silencing mechanism, it was with a hefty dose of self-loathing. Unraveling it was the key to everything, but I was missing too much of it. I did see little ways to alter the seal, but there was not a single overarching command that I could pick at, or even a series of them. If I changed one thing, another stipulation voided my alteration.

Furthermore, I wasn't sure if altering the seal would trigger a self-destruct mechanism. There was too much I didn't know. For so little gain, it wasn't worth risking Sai's life. Not even close.

I returned to the first hexagram I'd begun parsing. Themes of _binding_ and _time_, kanji for _blood, sacrifice, purpose, death_—fun stuff, really. Mixed in with that was honest-to-goodness nonsense. Longs strings of words that made zero sense, much like our identification codes for village security. The nonsense drove me nuts. What really got me going, though, was when the text slipped into figurative language.

Figurative. Language.

I was already doing my darndest to interpret thousands of kanji, which, when partnered with different kanji, yielded vastly different meanings. Adding metaphors?

No. Just no.

How dare he.

In a way, it was Mito's seals all over again. The one who placed the seal knew what it meant, and that was sufficient to actualize one's intention. Though, in this case, I had an abundance of context and still had difficulty parsing meaning. Such was the nature of figurative language.

There were weird not-quite-repetitions, too.

_…in unceasing service, until life has bled into the foundation, from the foundation, for the village, into the village, when the roots are cut from the trunk…_

Was Danzo trying to be poetic?

He swapped the kanji for "ninja," which was used throughout the seal, for a kanji that could mean both "foundation" and "root." The suffix "-tachi" used with the third instance of that kanji indicated a plural form. That suffix was written in hiragana, so there was no mistaking it. Given its close proximity to the kanji for "trunk," I picked "roots" as the interpretation.

I wasn't sure it made a difference. That whole sentence basically meant "in the event of your death, you are dead."

Big shocker.

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I kept forgetting to swallow my food. It would sit there in my mouth, a sodden lump, until I either snapped back to attention or starting choking on it. This time Sasuke had to kick me under the table to snap me out of my absorption—a new low for me.

The lowest low, really, because Katsuyu was running through a newsy spiel Tsunade wanted her to pass on, and I kept zoning out. But hey, Sasuke and I were eating together again. That was progress.

Katsuyu inched towards me. I sat straighter.

In her polite, careful manner, Katsuyu said, "Tsunade-sama wishes to remind you, Shikako-san, that mental cognition is enhanced by sleeping at night."

I shot a glare towards Sasuke.

Katsuyu cleared her throat. "In addition, she asks for an estimated date for your return."

"Soon," I said. Sasuke was going stir-crazy. I'd long since passed that mark. "Soon," I repeated. "This week even. I just—"

I wanted a way to fix this. I _needed_ it. For myself. For Sasuke. For Tsunade. Even for the sake of Root ninjas themselves. It was written there on their flesh, the extent of Danzo's warped vision. How many of Root ninjas had a choice, or even a semblance of a choice, to submit themselves to his command? Of those that did choose, did they understand the absolute loyalty he would demand? The seal was the closest thing to mind control as Danzo could get in physical form. To go the distance, he used intense emotional conditioning, preferably from a young age, and no one…no one could consent to that sort of thing. It was beyond the pale.

Danzo was doing it "for the village"—his own words, "for the village, into the village," whatever that meant. The repetition irked me. I wished I had flagged the phrase as _weird_ when I still had the original seal to look at.

"Tsunade-sama has expressed frustration in your _sensei_," said Katsuyu. "He arrived in Konoha more than a week ago and continues to pry for information regarding your whereabouts."

Ah, if Tsunade was stonewalling, that would set off alarm bells for sure. Poor Kakashi-sensei.

Katsuyu continued, "If your mission is prolonged, Tsunade-sama thinks it prudent for you to return to Konoha for a time. To rest as much as anything."

That was directed at me, no doubt.

"How long is Kakashi-sensei's leave?" I asked.

"Three weeks remain," she answered. "Tsunade-sama prefers to avoid his pestering for most of them."

"Who's replacing him at the front?" asked Sasuke.

"Shimura-san, though in an advisory capacity to Nara-sama."

I snorted. The war front was one of the few places I would semi-trust Danzo. I wouldn't trust him not to escalate with a disproportionate response, but he wouldn't, y'know, give up ground to Cloud. I did _not_ particularly like the fact that he was anywhere near my dad while I was investigating his treason.

Maybe a visit home was the best move. Being seen going about my business. All's normal here…

And it wasn't like I couldn't keep mulling over the seal's text in Konoha. The writing was burned into my brain. The figurative language and annoying repetitions played over in my mind like an awful yet inexplicably catchy song. Maybe a change of scenery would be good for me. Maybe the refrain of "for the village, into the village" would quiet down to a dull roar and give me some peace.

"Though, in the even of a frontal assault, Shimura-san would assume the role of General and head the defense."

Sasuke and Katsuyu exchanged more words, and I didn't hear a single one of them. It was like the bottom dropped out of my stomach. I shook my head, clearing my mind of the nonessentials and sorting out my thoughts, but it was so difficult, a full-fledged war of reason versus disbelief, all the rationality of my pre-frontal cortex competing with an emotional response from my limbic system, which kept insisting one thing: It couldn't be that simple. It couldn't.

The kanji—

They meant nothing in context.

So _remove_ them from context—

"Katsuyu." In the blink of eye, I'd swept dishes off the table, slapped paper down, and scribbled two kanji on it before a very startled ninja and Summons. "Tell me what you see, please."

Recovering from her surprise, Katsuyu eyed the kanji. She swelled to a larger size and stared down at them. Then—

"Shimura," she said simply.

I looked to Sasuke.

"Shimura," he agreed, watching me closely.

I stared at him. Then at the kanji. Put them together, remove them from context—

I bolted from the kitchen, Sasuke just two paces behind.

In my workroom, I grabbed the relevant papers and ripped them from their haphazard binding. There it was: "for the village." I was staring at the kanji for "will" or "intention" and a second for "village." To fit them in the sentence, I'd created a subordinate clause, but—

_But_—

Remove them from context, and they became "Shimura."

I had _missed_ this?

_For_ the village. For the purpose of the village. For the sake of the village. It made sense, so I'd accepted the interpretation. Only the annoying repetition had nagged at me, not the interpretation itself.

_…until life has bled into the foundation, from the foundation, for the village, into the village, when the roots are cut from the trunk… _

Figurative language. Put the new interpretation back into context and—

Dazed, my eyes took in Sasuke who waited anxiously with Katsuyu perched on his shoulder.

"I was wrong," I said and stared at the papers in disbelief. "It's Danzo. It's _his_ death." For a long moment, I was silent and still, absorbing the implications, letting the information wash over me and settle. It wouldn't settle. It was too big, too vast—

Sasuke cleared his throat. "A little help here?"

I blinked.

"The foundation is Danzo and Root," I said, dazed. "Together and separate. You can't remove one from the other. Thus, the second iteration of the kanji might as well be a metaphor for Danzo. And his clan name is _right there_. Shimura."

_…until life has bled into the foundation, from Danzo Shimura, into the village, when the roots are cut from the trunk…_

"You can link him directly to this seal?" asked Sasuke sharply.

"What?" I said. My mental processes skidded to a halt, reversed course, and headed back to the starting line._ Keep up, Sasuke_. "No, no. Not at all. The metaphors and variable interpretation prevent that. Even then it's not evidence of wrongdoing."

"Then?" he urged.

I breathed, frustrated by his pace. "Okay. So the Root seal links back to Danzo, much like how our Anbu seals lead to Tsunade. It's a signaling and communication feature. That's not news to me. I mean, I could never use the seal to prove that Danzo was at the other end of the link, but it was a link I knew had to exist, assuming Danzo was the shadow figure behind Root."

"A safe assumption," Sasuke said.

"Right." I breathed again. "So this hexagram, it's all about binding. I thought it was a security feature. It bound the seal to the Root agents in life, and it assured the seal's disappearance upon their deaths. That way, no one like me could study it."

"But Tsunade's medical seal circumvented that."

I nodded. "For a time, yes. All of that _is_ part of the seal somewhere. It has to be because we know the seal disappears after the death of the host. But it's not _this_ part. It's—" The words stuck in my throat. I grabbed his forearm and squeezed. I needed to convey the scope of this revelation.

"You said it's Danzo's death…" he prompted.

Danzo's death, yes, I couldn't believe I'd almost missed it.

Sasuke shook the hand I'd grabbed him with.

"The seal disappears," I said again. "Danzo considers himself the body of the tree. Root, foundation. Same thing, but _he's_ the trunk. So when his roots—when his agents are cut off from him, when the link is severed, when he's dead, the seal disappears. It leaves the Root agents unharmed and—and _free_."

I met his eyes and willed him to understand.

But Sasuke hesitated. He looked far less excited than the situation warranted. "So we kill Danzo, and his agents are free to speak," he summed up. "That doesn't help us gather evidence _before_ taking him down. Which is the whole point."

"Not if I can reconfigure the seal to _think_ Danzo's dead, if I can severe the link by rewriting the seal."

Sasuke stared. "And if you can do that..."

The same disbelief that had gripped me was seeping into him. Finally.

My grin was sharp enough to cut. "I'm saying if I can figure out how to do that, the entire goddamn seal disappears. Poof. Silencing and suicide mechanisms—literally everything with it."

And that—

"It's the start of his downfall," said Sasuke, wonderingly.

Even now, he didn't see how _big_ this was. It was a nigh-lethal hit against one of the greatest threats in Konoha's history. It was Sai's freedom. It was Tsunade's safety. It was the integrity of Konoha's leadership. It was the preservation of Konoha's vision and standing in the Elemental Nations.

Tears pricked behind my eyes.

It was justice for Sasuke's slaughtered family. Or the closest thing to justice I could give him. It was action where I'd once held back. It was, in small part, restitution for my cowardice long ago.

It was the end of Danzo. Proof that I'd protected my family. Proof that I'd done some good. Proof that I—

"Shikako." Sasuke's voice was pained, which snapped me back to the present. He was wincing. In pain? He was tugging on my hand, which…

"Shit."

In one of my hands, the papers were crumpled, torn, and half disintegrated. In the other, well... Sasuke's forearm was white and red, with outlines where my fingers had forced the blood away. Shit. That would bruise.

"Sorry." I shook myself and soothed my agitated chakra. "Are you okay? Here. Let me—" A quick series of handseals and the green aura of Mystical Palm activated. The feedback from the jutsu made me wince for him. If his arm was a metal bar, it would have bent and warped out of shape.

"It's fine," he said after a moment. His voice was weirdly tense. "It's just a little startling to have someone else's chakra invading mine."

I froze. The jutsu fizzled. Was he really…? I dropped my hands and searched his expression. Yes, at a time like this, he was really referencing that blasted kiss.

Very dryly, he added, "At least I didn't put your arm bone at risk."

"Radius," I said automatically because that was the bone that suffered under my ministrations.

He studied me. "Since you manipulated your chakra unknowingly, I think I can safely judge my own offense was not so egregious as you led me to believe."

Were we talking about this?

We were _not_ talking about this.

"We have barely spoken for days," he said, his voice growing deeper, "and now it's becoming clear that you—not me, _you_—overreacted in the extreme."

Jarred by the sudden change in topic, in tone, in meaning, in everything, I swallowed. "I said it was perfectly normal. You ran away before I could clarify the situation."

His eyes didn't flash red, but the heat of his gaze burned no less. "I left the room because you looked at me like I'd done the _single most embarrassing_ thing in the world, and I've spent the last twelve days wondering if it would be better to apologize or bury myself in a ditch somewhere."

"You're so dramatic," I hissed, so very jarred by his intensity. Did he keep a well of it somewhere?

He shifted closer. There wasn't much space between us to begin with, and even the slight change of his weight from one foot to the other raised my hackles.

"Tell me, Shikako. Was your heart racing like mad just now? Because that was what happened with me."

As a matter of fact, my heart was thumping quite hard. Adrenaline had kicked it into overdrive, and it was only natural that an intensely beating heart, inside which lay the Eighth Chakra Gate, would stimulate chakra's activation, resulting in subconscious manipulation.

"I see your point," I said, strained. "I really do see your point. There were slightly different circumstances at play, as you well know, and—look, can we focus for a minute on what matters?"

"This _does_ matter."

A polite cough drew my gaze.

"Pardon me," said Katsuyu from Sasuke's shoulder, "I followed you right up to the bit about ditches and racing hearts."

I did not face-palm. I did not.

"My apologies, Katsuyu-sama," I said stiffly. "Please tell the Hokage we'll return this afternoon."

I felt Sasuke's gaze on me as I gathered the hundreds of papers and twisted them into hammerspace. Then I stared challengingly at him as if to say, 'Well I'm packed. How about you?' Grudgingly, he turned to leave. Watching him go, I tried my best to snap my attention back to the seal, back to Danzo, back to formulating a viable plan to continue this extremely promising development.

It was no use.

As I saw it now, Danzo's downfall was inevitable, and it was Sasuke who loomed large in my future, an implacable foe. Five years, ten years, whenever, he was an inescapable fact of life. This conversation wasn't over. If Sasuke had his way, it would never be over. That was my takeaway from the fiasco of a kiss, everything that led to it, and everything that followed. Even in the fervor of his honesty, he'd held back. So forget his confession: _I like you, Shikako_. It was inadequate.

I was pretty sure he was in love with me.

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A/N: Ahem, would you believe I thought this whole chapter would basically be filler and set up? Then suddenly Shikako's having one revelation after the next.

I took the kanji about "Shimura" straight from the Naruto wiki. Read it here: "Danzō's family name, Shimura, is written with the kanji for _will_, _intention_ (志) and _village_ (村) and can be interpreted as _"I did it for the village,"_ possibly hinting at Danzō's true intentions."

I hope that what I did with the information makes sense.

Pretty sure the next thing I'll post will be an omake from Kakashi's POV. If that doesn't come by the end of October, you shouldn't expect it until late November or early December. I'll be traveling in Vietnam and Thailand before heading to the U.S. after a year spent abroad. Then it's Thanksgiving, four family birthdays (including mine), Christmas…. You see where I'm going with this. It might be a while before I can update again. Rest assured, I'm still very invested in this story, have loads of ideas for it, etc. I'm not dropping it.


	9. OMAKE: Kakashi's POV

***Edit 12/14/19 - I don't think I can meet the goal of updating by the end of December. I've been way busier than I'd anticipated. All good things, but boy has life been hectic! Check my profile in January for notes on the update schedule.**

So here's what Kakashi's up to. I've added a few of my thoughts regarding Kakashi and his role as a note at the end.

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Omake: Kakashi's POV

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Kakashi strolled down the streets of Konoha and pulled out _Icha Icha_ when it looked like people might try to crowd their General. His journey continued more pleasantly after that, though he remained troubled.

Once again, his cute little genin had not welcomed him home. Unlike last time, however, he hadn't received exasperated assurances that they were expected home soon. Tsunade had simply booted him from her office. As Hound, he'd poked around Anbu headquarters, heard a few bits and pieces about Bat and Hawk—and _ghosts_, really; he'd chuckled—and learned that their usual teammates weren't on assignment.

Curious.

He had nagged Tenzou a bit, had taken his kouhai out to dinner, had left him with the check, and in general had enjoyed his leave from the war front. Shikako and Sasuke did not materialize during that time. Kakashi went digging through mission records just to make sure Tsunade wasn't acting sneaky in order to annoy him when, in fact, Shikako and Sasuke's mission was documented under General Forces. It wasn't. Furthermore, there was no record of them having left the village. Not through the main gate, at least, and while Anbu certainly controlled comings and goings through their gates, Anbu didn't leave a paper trail for Kakashi to follow. He could only go on hearsay, and hearsay suggested that no one had the slightest idea where his genin were.

He was not worried. They could take care of themselves and take care of each other. So, no, he was not worried.

He was, however, a little peeved. If Tsunade was sending his genin on secret missions to infiltrate enemy territory or whatnot, well, he'd really prefer to know about it.

"Don't dig into this, Hatake," she barked. "After I demote you to office grunt, I'll prohibit Jiraiya's books in the workplace."

She would not typically withhold scraps of information—something so meager as an expected return date—especially when such scraps would precipitate his total absence from her office, a circumstance they both desired. How irksome.

"If it's relevant to War Ops, I should be informed," he said bluntly. If it wasn't relevant to War Ops, then he'd be doubly concerned because what else deserved this level of classification? He wanted his scraps, dammit.

"They aren't your genin anymore, Hatake." She leaned back and studied him. "I won't brief their overprotective _sensei_. I would, however, brief my presumptive successor."

Tsunade's eyes gleamed.

He left via window.

As had become his custom, Kakashi headed towards the Nara compound to listen for news. As he leaped over roofs, he tried to puzzle out Tsunade's behavior.

Her parting shot had felt the slightest bit like a test, but he didn't know if he passed or not. He'd fled too quickly to judge. She had to know he wouldn't touch the Hat with a ten-meter pole. If he'd taken leave of his senses and agreed to the proposition, would he have failed her test? There were plenty of reasons to justify briefing him—were there specific reasons to justify _not_ briefing him? Something that he, specifically, should not look into? Something in his history that made his awareness or participation unwanted? Kakashi was at a loss.

He arrived at the Nara compound. The clan grounds were lovely, so it was no bother to stroll around in a clandestine fashion, as he wasn't implicitly or explicitly permitted to be there. (Clan defenses. Pfft. So cute.) He didn't care to alarm Yoshino by popping in and asking after Shikako. He'd observed Shikamaru and saw no troubling signs. Well, the boy looked overworked, but weren't they all?

Kakashi might simply have to mention the lack of information to Shikaku when he returned to the front. Perhaps a disgruntled father with a formal position in Tsunade's administration could squeeze more from her.

He paused, having heard Shikako's name. Kakashi channeled more chakra to his ears.

"After all, any children they have will be as much Nara as Uchiha."

Kakashi's pause turned into a full-on halt.

A deeper voice said, "They're young still."

"Shikako turns fifteen in two weeks. Fifteen, during wartime. I don't have to remind you of the shenanigans everyone got up to during the Second War. "

"She's far too cautious to bind herself to a partner with undue thought."

"Probably," the woman agreed. "That is my hope, but it simply means she has time to _plan_."

"Plan what exactly? What is it you anticipate?"

"That very much depends on our response to their union."

"It's a fine match. I don't know why we would consider opposing it."

Silence.

"Are we going to oppose it, Kofuku?" the man said with clear trepidation.

"No, no, of course not," she said. "It's a fine match, as you say. Thus, the fact remains: their children will need a clan. Bloodline theft is as rampant as ever."

Had Kakashi missed something? Something really, really significant between his genin? He had never noted any particular signs—well, he had wondered once or twice, on Sasuke's part. (Those were new earrings she'd been wearing, and the box they'd come in was right there on the ground at her feet.) Other than that, he'd only seen camaraderie, the likes of which he could only dream of existing within his old team.

"So you wish to fold the Uchiha into the Nara clan? A new branch perhaps?"

"That would be the easiest solution," she agreed. "However, I suspect the boy's pride wouldn't allow it. Perhaps if Shikako herself advocated for it, but we can't rely on that. She has appropriate clan pride herself, but what is that next to young love? Uchihas can be so impetuous."

"Why are we discussing this as though it is a certainty?"

That was Kakashi's question!

"I don't mean to suggest that it is. Still, I believe it wise to formulate a response now, one that appeals to her nature, and we must ensure the other Elders' support. Inter-clan marriages can be so messy." She paused to sip her tea. Kakashi heard a scrape of ceramic as she picked up the cup. "If I'm wrong, if nothing comes of this, at least we'll be prepared for the next suitor."

"Aha! It becomes clear. You don't care a thing about Uchiha this or that—you want Shikako under your supervision for the rest of your natural life!"

The cup clanked down. "I want her affiliated with Nara RnD. For life, yes. Do you have any idea what she's done? With little more than a nudge from Jiraiya, during pieces of time scattered in between training and missions and—"

"I know it as well as you. Don't think I don't. Her abilities with our clan techniques are alarming."

"She is her father's daughter, Kasuga. Moreover, she's got a spiteful streak that's all her own. If one of our Elders tries to _manage_ her as we tried with Shikaku, I shudder to consider—"

"Is that not precisely what you are trying to do right now?"

"Far from it," said Kofuku. "I am attempting to chart a course that keeps her affiliated with the clan. We make a path where she can wed Sasuke Uchiha in every sense of the word and legally retain her family name. It happens informally all the time at the hospital. I want to make it official. I want Shikako's creations stamped with the Nara name. She has enough clan pride that the idea would appeal to her."

"Yes," Kasuga said tentatively, "though I'm not sure, in practice, how—for example, would she still be added to her husband's registry if she did not take his name?"

"One of the many questions that needs answering. My very point in approaching you."

"It took you a damned long time to get to the point."

"Yes, well, you had nothing better to do."

He harrumphed. "So you create the option for her in the hope that she sees it for the gift it is and not a form of manipulation. I see why you're reluctant. You want to establish a new precedent for inter-clan marriages. It will need approval by the Council. That involves coalitions. Your fingerprints will be all over this, Kofuku. Handled poorly, it might even create an uproar, and all the while, people will be looking for the impetus behind the movement. What will you do then? Push Shikako and Sasuke into the vanguard of your crusade before they've even begun to court?"

Kasuga had begun chuckling midway through the scenario. Kofuku apparently did not share his mirth.

"I won't risk losing her the same way we lost her father. I want a united front when we approach Shikaku. He must be the one to discuss the option. She'll listen to him and see the wisdom in this."

"Really, Kofuku. One would think you fear retribution. Shikako would never harm the clan."

"Not directly, no, but can you really say she wouldn't divorce herself from our RnD in favor of Konoha's, or—or scrutinize our products and design something better and flood the market—perhaps she wouldn't take it so far, but she'd design the thing and wave it in our faces only to show she could."

Kasuga was still chuckling. Kofuku let him go on for a while before she added, in a riled tone, "Amusing or not, their union is a possibility we must consider—a likelihood even, what with Tsunade throwing them together at every opportunity. Better to consider the ramifications now."

"I do see your point," Kasuga conceded. "I'm still concerned that this will blow up in your face. If Shikako learns that she's the impetus behind your scheme—"

"Not a scheme. Never call it a scheme."

"Why not instead have Shikaku present the idea to her when the time comes and have Shikako take care of the leg work? She has a way of shaking up the humdrum of the Tower."

"Because, frankly, I wouldn't put it past her to eschew marriage altogether, if she deems it both a plot and a hassle."

"Eschew marriage and—what? Simply _live_ with her partner? Even Shikako—I don't think—well...yes, perhaps."

They were silent so long that Kakashi thought the conversation was over. He wasn't concerned, only amused. Vastly so.

"At least Shikamaru is dutiful," Kofuku said with a sigh.

"He's already dated a girl from outside the clan."

"A fleeting relationship that ended around the time the baby was born. Shikamaru will recognize the need to safeguard our bloodline."

"New blood did not hurt in the twins' case."

"Oh, and where does it stop, Kasuga? Shikaku marries for love and lets his children marry for love, and they let their children marry for love. Soon our clan head is less a Nara than our most distant cousins. We were fortunate with Yoshino. It was good luck her genetics were compatible, nothing more."

"Epigenetics," Kasuga clarified. "It's the _expression_ of particular genes—"

"I'm familiar with the science," she snapped. "You were the one who slept through most of Asuka-_oba_'s lessons. I used a smaller word I thought you could understand."

They began sniping back and forth, and Kakashi retreated to mull over the state of affairs Shikako was falling into unknowingly. He was confident she could weather the storm, if she thought it was worth the bother, but she would be highly embarrassed to be the center of attention. Few people enjoyed having their romantic lives dissected for all to hear. He really couldn't fathom her reaction. She might flee into the depths of Anbu, never to emerge.

Perhaps a word to Shikaku would not go amiss? The clan head would not appreciate the implication of spying but he would appreciate a heads up.

Or would that draw a target on Sasuke's back? Kakashi didn't have a good sense of how the Nara head would react to his daughter dating. Shikaku was Sasuke's direct superior. What was best for Shikako might not be best for Sasuke.

Decisions, decisions.

In Kakashi's experience, the best decision was usually not to involve himself.

In any case, an informed decision required observation of his genin, and he remained totally in the dark as to their whereabouts.

How positively troublesome.

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One comment he'd overheard stuck with Kakashi. A few hours later, he was bothered enough to pop by the Hokage's office.

Tsunade straightened in her chair, looking thunderous. Kakashi stayed on the windowsill. The two eyed each other.

"Are you playing matchmaker with my genin?"

"Out, Hatake!"

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A/N: Short, hopefully somewhat sweet. I think Kakashi is particularly difficult to write, which is one reason I'm more or less in awe of how SQ writes him (and a reason why you hardly see him in No Shadows).

Regarding Kakashi's role in the Danzo plotline, I see Tsunade as operating on a very strict need-to-know basis, and given Kakashi's past association with Danzo (his voluntary association, no less), he's not exactly in the clear in Tsunade's book. Like, she trusts him almost implicitly, but then there's the fact that she wasn't in Konoha when Root was disbanded and doesn't seem to know a whole lot about what went down then (Sunshine Sidestories, Chapter 7). I imagine her having read Tenzou's file and interviewed him for, purportedly, Mokuton and Orochimaru-type reasons, but she also gains a picture of how Tenzou and Kakashi met. I'm not sure why Kakashi wouldn't fully come clean with Tsunade about Danzo wanting to assassinate Hiruzen, unless Kakashi truly believes Root is disbanded and Danzo's lust for power is checked. Maybe both Tenzou and Kakashi are following Hiruzen's orders and letting sleeping lions lie. Tsunade could flat-out ask Kakashi about his role in Root being disbanded, but she's not willing to risk tipping off Danzo if Kakashi does harbor some loyalty to him, not while she's got other options.

In this omake, there's a moment when Tsunade tests Kakashi's ambition. She's curious to see if he hesitates about the presumptive successor thing. If he'd hesitated, she would have more cause to wonder if someone has been trying to influence him. Tsunade might see Danzo as too old to seize power, but if Kakashi were on his side or at least sympathetic...

So basically, if Tsunade is not upfront about her concerns to Kakashi, Kakashi won't spill the full extent of his history with Danzo for the heck of it. Make sense? There's no indication in canon that Tsunade and Kakashi discussed Danzo as a threat (at least not that I remember). I'm trying to account for that.

Updates—my hope and goal is to post again by the end of December. I'm actually traveling out of the country again and traveling for Christmas, but hopefully I'll hit a writing stride and crank out another chapter by then. There's also a chance I'll complete an epilogue for No Shadows Without the Sun instead. That idea is fun and fluffy, which is infinitely easier to write than stuff coming up for this story.


	10. Chapter 9

Hellooooooooo! I do apologize for disappearing for such a long time. I won't bother you with the details. I did leave a couple of status updates on my profile, which I'll do again in the future if I disappear for months on end.

This is shortish chapter, basically letting you all know that the story isn't dead and to wrap up stuff from the previous chapters.

Onto the chapter — before Kakashi's omake, we left off with Shikako realizing Sasuke might well be in love with her. There's no resolution between the two at that point. Shikako also had a major realization regarding the Root seal.

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Chapter Nine

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Sasuke and I waited outside Tsunade's office for a good half hour before being waved in by the unsuspicious secretary. That was the point of going through the tedious channels. Do not arouse suspicion. Be normal. We weren't returning from a top-secret mission. Nope. We hadn't even checked in at the gate because we'd never checked _out_ at the gate. We had completely bypassed village security.

At least that part of the return trip was easy. The rest of it was tense. Few words spoken, stiff limbs, averted glances, that kind of thing. Then there was this other part of me still reeling from my own discovery.

Walking to the Hokage's office door was another minor spectacle in what I hoped was not the new normal between me and Sasuke. I was very aware of him, aware of the physical space he occupied, and that bothered me. As such, I was keeping a reasonable gap between us as we walked, a gap that the door tried to foil. By the unimpressed look on his face, Sasuke knew exactly what I was doing when I hung back and let him walk through first.

It was a relief to see Tsunade sitting behind her desk, like a return to normalcy—or maybe it was that someone else was in control. I didn't have to call the shots. I could share my information and act on her orders. First things first, though. I pulled Mito's sealing scroll out of hammerspace and set it on Tsunade's desk, glad to be rid of the thing.

Tsunade raised a brow. "I thought you'd have a clever argument for why you should hold onto this. Or did you already memorize it?"

I tried to compose a response that was not rude.

Sasuke cleared his throat. "Apparently their sealing styles are not compatible."

Not compatible, my ass.

"Mito-sama preferred a highly interpretive form of sealing," I said.

"Plenty of misinterpretation to go around," Sasuke agreed.

I shot him a look. Not a glare, just an "are you kidding me" sort of glance. He was already regretting the comment. I could tell.

Tsunade considered us. "Let's hear this over tea."

We fell into step behind her as she left the office, heading for a debriefing room. I assumed the ruse was for the sake of the Anbu who shadowed her. They didn't follow us inside, but the secretary came in moments after us with tea. I willed the man to leave quickly. I had news to share and wannabe dictators to ruin.

The secretary left.

Tsunade didn't sit down, so neither did we.

No one was sitting. Despite the steeping tea and availability of chairs, no one was sitting.

"Explain yourselves."

Tsunade's tone was dead serious, her posture tense, her chakra alert.

Sasuke had stiffened beside me. Whatever reception we'd expected, it didn't involve an unhappy Hokage.

"The mission was a success," I said quickly.

"Oh? How so?"

There was a falseness to her prompting, as though the question she asked wouldn't provide the answer she wanted.

Even so, I launched into a spiel about the seal's connection to its creator's death and circled back to the ramifications therein. I kept it short. This was the sort of time when you kept things short. Tsunade's temper was not something I wanted to test.

"We stayed well within mission parameters," said Sasuke, his tone voicing the obvious question—_what the hell?_

What had we done? What hadn't we done? What was there to explain beyond the mission and its promising results? What could possibly explain Tsunade's displeasure with us?

My gaze stayed fixed on Tsunade even as she studied us gravely.

Finally, Tsunade said, "Katsuyu informed me of unnatural behavior from each of you. Heightened tempers, heightened rivalry, days on end without speaking a word followed by abnormal speech patterns."

What the—?

"I'd like you to account for this."

That was very much an order. I scarcely knew how to articulate the answer, let alone why it was necessary. Stupefied, I glanced at Sasuke.

The color was rising in his cheeks. His mouth twitched like he knew it was supposed to make words, but he couldn't, for the life of him, figure out what they should be. Tsunade continue to stare us down, and there I was flummoxed because why, oh why would a bit of unnatural behavior on a mission result in this kind of—

"Oh," I said, as things clicked, "you're worried the seal affected us psychologically."

She raised a brow. "Should I be?"

Changes in patterns of behavior. Changes in relationships. Those were the warning signs. She'd told us at the onset of the mission to be wary. She had experienced firsthand having a ninja's loyalty undermined. She'd gone so far as to prohibit interaction with _anyone_ outside our small circle. I'd suggested a hypnotizing jutsu, but the source or trigger was unknown…

Okay. I could see where this was coming from. It made sense to be cautious. If Sasuke and I had been compromised, then every shred of insight we offered would be suspect.

So the only way to clear up her suspicion was to explain what had happened. Right. Easy.

Sasuke's face was heated while I was sure mine was aghast.

There was silence.

Then, so very stiffly, Sasuke said, "An interpersonal difficulty arose during the course of the mission. However, it was resolved, mostly. The mission objective didn't suffer for it."

Arguable, but I wasn't going to argue.

Tsunade's eyes were fixed on us. "Did this interpersonal difficulty come about as a result of working on the seal?"

"No—or, yes," he said, "but not in the way—not how—"

"Not as a direct result," I interjected. "It was the situation, not the seal."

Tsunade did not look impressed. "So this interpersonal difficulty predates your work on the seal?"

"Yes."

"No."

We'd spoken simultaneously.

We glared at other.

"Explain."

The air quivered.

I swallowed. "The foundation of the interpersonal difficulty existed before our work on the seal. The situation was exacerbated during the mission."

Tsunade waited, alert and interested. Details—she wanted _details_.

Sasuke took over again. "Anbu protocol dictates swift action to resolve inter-team conflict on long-term assignments." He was crisp and formal. "When discussion proved insufficient, we engaged in a physical act…in an effort to relieve…tension—"

"We kissed," I snarled because _goddamnit_ this was not a time for his ass-backward, formal speech to lead to miscommunications.

Tsunade's lips twitched. I _saw them_ _twitch_.

"Right. That," Sasuke confirmed. "Shikako was taken aback, even though it was her idea—"

I was grinding my teeth together. "Does that part matter?"

"—which led to further interpersonal difficulties. The situation has not been resolved to the satisfaction of both parties," he added.

"Because there is nothing left to say or do but call a truce," I said.

"Again with the wartime analogies," he grumbled.

I sealed my lips shut and looked at Tsunade.

"Ah," she replied.

Silence.

Tsunade spoke, "Can you assure me the, ah, _foundation_, as you say, predates your work on the seal?"

"A year," Sasuke grunted, "give or take a few months."

Tsunade looked to me for confirmation. "Since the exams in Hidden Mist. Sasuke had never even seen the seal at that point."

"The heightened rivalry?" Tsunade queried. "Katsuyu couldn't account for it."

"Katsuyu-sama was not present when we played a game called ping pong. She must have heard us arguing about the winner later on."

"I've never heard of the game," said Tsunade.

"I invented it."

"Of course you did."

Silence. Tsunade studied us.

"The seal then," she said and gestured at the chairs. Relieved, I slumped into it. Sasuke's response was more subtle than mine, but our reactions were enough to bring another look of amusement to Tsunade's face.

Then she grew serious. "Can you alter the seal?"

"Alter it, yes, but I wasn't able to find the right _place_ to alter it before the seal expired."

"The place where it links to Danzo."

I stilled. It was the first time either she or I had used his name. We'd danced around it, but this was the first verbal acknowledgement. It was a show of trust, a sign of her confidence.

In response to her question, in response to more than that really, I nodded. "The link is likely part of the signaling mechanism. I've got a pretty good guess where it will be."

"So you need another agent. An expendable one."

I withheld a wince. Expendable, yeah. Not Sai. If at all possible, not Sai. He might be willing. He might volunteer, but until the thing was done, I couldn't be absolutely sure I wouldn't detonate the seal and the agent with it.

"At least two," I said. "I need to study the signaling mechanism. That's one tongue. Assuming I work it out, then I need a living agent to practice on."

Tsunade drummed her fingers on the table, a furrow etched between her brows. "I'll seize whatever chances are presented, but understand that it might not be possible, not for a while. Each move we make is an opportunity to show our hand. I'll be frank with you, he has resources I've only begun to uncover. He's been a power in this village as long as I've been alive. He won't relinquish his position easily. Furthermore," she paused. Just once more, she drummed her fingers.

She was letting us in, letting us see a small part of her deliberations.

"Furthermore, if his death frees his agents, it suggests his betrayal is of the administration, not of the village. That makes a difference."

My spirits sank.

"After your findings in the Uchiha safe and your work on the seal, you two have the most complete picture of anyone outside myself and Jiraiya. Guard your knowledge, but do not act on it. Give him no reason to suspect. If it comes to open confrontation, we'll be the first to move."

"We could—" Sasuke's stopped as abruptly as he started.

"Go on," said Tsunade.

"We could…remove him first. Gather evidence later." Sasuke shifted uncomfortably.

Tsunade nodded. "The war opens up such opportunities, but ideally it's our last resort."

"What's the first?" I asked.

"It depends on the scope of his crimes and the status of the war." That was all she said. It seemed she had shared all she was willing to. To me, she said, "Continue studying your notes on the seal. Be prepared. I'll be able to give you about as much warning as I did the first time."

Which was to say _none_.

"I'll need Sasuke again," I said. "His Sharingan is the only reason we could copy as much of the seal as we could."

"Hardly the only reason," Sasuke drawled. "Your ridiculous glasses had a hand in it."

He refused to call them Swirlyscopes even when he was trying to pay a compliment.

Tsunade looked between us. "At this rate, your sensei will have far more cause to accuse me in the future." Before either of us could ask what that meant, she said, "Excellent work. You're dismissed."

.

.

.

Leaving the tower, my mood was stormier than it'd been when we arrived.

"What's wrong?" asked Sasuke.

"I got ahead of myself," I admitted. He raised questioning brows. We were walking down a busy street. Not the time to reply candidly. "For a little while, it felt like I could snap my fingers and be done with this, but it's complicated."

In my mind, Danzo was condemned. I knew he'd conspired with Orochimaru, that he'd kidnapped children and stolen bloodlines. I knew he'd manipulated Itachi and brought about the massacre of the Uchiha.

I knew the worst of what he'd done. Tsunade didn't. Where I saw reason to leap forward, she saw reason for caution, to quietly build a mountain of incriminating evidence. There were degrees of betrayal, and this wasn't just about killing Danzo. It was about dismantling his power structure and influence. It was about gathering information—just how many departments had he sunk his claws in? How high and how far had the corruption spread? What plans were currently in motion? And if he was removed in one fell swoop, was there a successor waiting in the wings? That last one was doubtful, as I saw it. Everything I remembered suggested that he hoarded power.

Sasuke eyed the ripe, red tomatoes in a vegetable stand we passed.

"I think you've made a lot of progress. It's not insignificant," he said lightly.

True. And my initial assessment of a swift, merciless trial wasn't inaccurate. It was simply incomplete. Especially given the war with Cloud, she'd want every question answered before clan leaders and the other Elders knew to ask them. A political dogfight was the last thing Konoha needed.

So I was back to my familiar, frustrating role of having more information than I could dispense. I might have tried to complain to Sasuke in some vague way, but a very familiar and very welcome chakra signature appeared nearby.

"Kakashi-sensei," I said, and while I didn't quite glomp him, I did hop to his side and hug him a little harder than usual. It had been too long. "We heard you've been looking for us. Sorry."

While I disengaged, he reached out and ruffled Sasuke's hair but kept looking at me.

"Shikako," sensei said pleasantly, "I overheard some chatter about your eventual betrothal." He scratched at his cheek with a single finger while I gaped. "Congratulations, I suppose. The lucky man will have a singularly driven set of Elders to contend with. Mind if I borrow Sasuke for a bit?"

Gone were the days when sensei could simply grab us and whisk us off to his chosen destination, but Sasuke looked bewildered enough that he didn't offer much resistance when Kakashi-sensei wrapped a hand around his upper arm.

"Team training at seven," sensei said. Then he pulled Sasuke into a Body Flicker.

Dumbfounded, I watched them disappear.

.

.

.

I found Shika at the edge of the forest, cleaning out the troughs. He turned to me with a half-smile, and I joined in without a word. The lining and edges of the troughs had to be de-gunked to keep mold from growing.

"Good mission?" Shikamaru asked.

_Quiet_, I nearly said, but considering the emotional storm that had struck, the word was far from representative. _Peaceful _was so far off the mark it was almost laughable.

My silence had Shikamaru looking up with narrowed eyes.

I waved off his concern. "It was…" _uneventful_—nope, "fine," I settled on. "Honestly, I was more at risk of a paper cut than anything else."

While we worked, Shikamaru filled me in on clan goings-on and which friends were doing what. Neji had earned a field promotion to jounin. He was furloughed and was now working in War Ops, presumably to gain the administrative and political know-how that accompanied the promotion.

Our idle chat lapsed into silence. Finally, I asked, "Have you heard any talk around the clan of betrothals? Mine, more specifically."

His head shot up, as did his brows. I admit I was relieved to see complete surprise written on his face, though I had expected it. _Shikamaru_ was not someone I needed to worry about.

"I'll look into it," he promised.

I hmmed. "Kofuku-oba would be a good one to start with."

.

.

.

Sasuke was already at the training field when I arrived the next morning. I plopped down next to him, like I would have done at any other time before our last mission. Something still was not quite right between us—something not quite wrong either. Just…something.

We waited for a while in silence before I asked, "Were you practicing Kirin last night? I could see the lightning show from my house."

He grunted. "After we talked, Sensei figured I might need to obliterate something. I think he just wanted an excuse to see the jutsu."

I wanted to joke about the sparkly giraffe, but instead what came out was, "Have a nice talk?"

Sasuke snorted and made air quotes. "It was 'One Hundred and One Ways Clans Will Endeavor to Take Advantage of You and How To Stick It To Them.'"

"How do you stick it to them?"

"Join Anbu. Disappear regularly and randomly, possibly for years on end."

"First step's completed then," I said agreeably.

"Aside from that—knowing my options, deciding what I want and where I'd compromise, establishing boundaries if I'm ever approached."

Boundaries, huh? Maybe I should erect my own. Maybe a return to normalcy was not the answer. Even though it was what we both wanted, the presence of the intangible _something_ might make it impossible.

"How'd it go on your end?" he said.

"I sicced Shikamaru on them. He had the story within an hour."

"And?"

I eyed him. "Sensei already told you, didn't he."

"Mostly, I think."

I fell backward to lie against the ground. It was a pretty morning. A bright blue sky, a few clouds drifting lazily. Shikamaru's favorite kind of day.

"Mum was mad at first and then decided it was funny. Since they're doing something that could actually benefit people—kunoichi in particular—she said to let them have their crusade. It'll keep them busy." My voice grew caustic. "Though you'd think with the war and all, they'd find something better to do with their time."

"Sensei says it's because of the war, that people over-contemplate mortality and when those people have clan heritage to consider…"

He trailed off, and even though part of me was tempted—tempted, just once more, to try—I didn't remind him of his own clan heritage and my lack of interest in it. He knew. He knew, and that knowledge changed nothing. Somehow, I had to accept that. To learn to live with it.

So instead, I said, "Sorry it's _my_ clan you have to watch out for."

He replied, "In a way, I would _rather_ it was your clan than anyone one else's." He paused, giving me a chance to retort, but at this point, I wasn't even surprised by his honesty. When I kept lying there silently, he added, "What I don't want is for you to feel guilty or responsible for things you can't change."

We had tried to end this conversation, to call a truce, to move past it. He was resolute. I was insincere, or at least incomplete in my sincerity. There couldn't be a compromise. There could only be understanding and acceptance, else I would risk the very friendship I held so dear.

"Right then," I said. "One more thing to talk about. In a few years."

Our eyes met. His were warm and knowing.

"In a few years," he agreed.

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* * *

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A/N: I think I can eke out another chapter in the next month, but no promises. I'm also working ahead and drafting later chapters to ensure I build up the plot reasonably well. I only have a couple of hours some mornings of the week for writing, but I'm trying to make them count! Have a lovely day, everyone!


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